36 courses with the subject ARCH B, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
A historical survey of the archaeology and art of the ancient Near East and Egypt.
A historical survey of the archaeology and art of Greece, Etruria, and Rome.
A study of the co-development of the Greek city-states and their sanctuaries. Archaeological evidence is surveyed in its historic context. The political formation of the city-state and the role of religion is presented, and the political, economic, and religious institutions of the city-states are explored with a focus on regional variations in timelines of development, building styles, and connectivity. The logistics of building construction, religious travel, and interregional influences will also be addressed.
In this course, learn about life growing up and getting old in ancient Egypt through their everyday food and drink including ancient recipes and massive factory installations for brewing beer, their clothing and adornment, education, household religion and the real beliefs of your average Egyptian often quite different from the religion sponsored by the pharaoh and the state. Learn about their illnesses and their medical treatments, types of jobs and complaints about lazy coworkers, life in the workmen's village of the great pyramid and the valley of the Kings, curses against enemies, disowning misbehaving adult children and even their leisure and playtime through games, sports, toys, and pets. This course will assess the diverse lives of a laborer, slave, foreigner, high-ranking official, pharaoh and more throughout Egypt from 2600 BC- 1080 BC in the village Lahun, the Egyptian capital Tell el-Amarna, the temple town in South Abydos, and the workman’s village for the Giza pyramids and the Valley of the Kings. It will examine Egyptian life through artifacts including ivory wands and birthing bricks for childbirth, children's toys, weapons and tools, amulets, and more; tomb scenes of daily life; and societal values through fairy tales, love poetry, legal documents, letters, scribal training practice texts, work attendance rosters, and ostraca.
This course explores the visual culture of the ancient Mediterranean world from the second millennium BCE to early Roman times. Drawing from an extensive variety of extant evidence that includes monuments, sculpture, paintings, mosaics, and artifacts deriving from culturally and geographically distinct areas, such as the Minoan world, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia, Italy, Tunisia, and Spain, the course explores how such evidence may have been viewed and experienced and how it may have, in turn, shaped the visual culture of the well-interconnected ancient Mediterranean world. Focusing on selected examples of evidence, including its materials, style, and methods of production, the course will also consider how past and current scholarly attitudes, approaches, and terminology have affected the understanding and interpretation of this evidence.
This course examines the life, personality, career, and military achievements of Alexander the Great, as well as the extraordinary reception of his legacy in antiquity and through modern times. It uses historical, archaeological and art-historical evidence to reconstruct a comprehensive picture of Alexander’s cultural background and examines the real and imaginary features of his life and afterlife as they developed in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and succeeding periods in both Europe and Asia. Special attention is also placed on the appeal that Alexander’s life and achievements have generated and continue to retain in modern popular visual culture as evidenced from documentary films and motion pictures.
This course examines the archaeology of Iran from circa 6000 BC to the coming of Alexander the Great at the end of the fourth century BC. Through the course we examine the beginnings of agriculture, pastoralism and sedentary settlement in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods; Bronze Age interaction between Iran, Mesopotamia, south Asia and the Arabian Gulf; developments within the Iron Age; and the emergence of the Achaemenid Empire (538-332BC).
This course examines the visual culture of the Ancient Near East based on an extensive body of architectural, sculptural, and pictorial evidence dating from prehistoric times through the fifth century BCE. We will explore how a variety of surviving art, artifacts, sculpture, monuments, and architecture deriving from geographically distinct areas of the ancient Near East, such as Mesopotamia, the Eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, and Iran, may have been viewed and experienced in their historical contexts, including the contribution of ancient materials and technologies of production in shaping this viewing and experience. By focusing on selected examples of diverse evidence, we will also consider how past and current scholarly methods and approaches, many of them art-historical, archaeological, and architectural in aim, have affected the understanding and interpretation of this evidence. In doing so, we will pay special attention to critical terms such as aesthetics, style, narrative, representation, and agency.
This topic course explores methods used in Archaeology. Course content varies.
A survey of the material culture of ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq, from the earliest phases of state formation (circa 3500 B.C.E.) through the Achaemenid Persian occupation of the Near East (circa 331 B.C.E.). Emphasis will be on art, artifacts, monuments, religion, kingship, and the cuneiform tradition. The survival of the cultural legacy of Mesopotamia into later ancient and Islamic traditions will also be addressed.
A survey of the history, material culture, political and religious ideologies of, and interactions among, the five great empires of the ancient Near East of the second and first millennia B.C.E.: New Kingdom Egypt, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia, the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires in Mesopotamia, and the Persian Empire in Iran.
This course examines the archaeology of one of the most fundamental developments to have occurred in human society in the last 6,000 years, the origins of cities. Via assigned readings, class work and lectures we will consider the varied factors which led (or did not lead) to the emergence of cities, questioning what cities were (and are) and how they functioned in the ancient world. We will explore different trajectories towards urbanism that can be identified in the archaeological record and consider societies that did not experience these changes. By exploring processes and practices over the long-term, students will address issues of inequality in the earliest urban societies, developing an understanding of how axes of power and difference interacted to produce inequalities and hierarchies. We will also discuss the impacts these developments have had, and continue to have, on modern society and culture in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. Themes covered will include the ‘urban revolution’, rurality and urbanism, urban planning and growth, houses and households, communication and mobility, climate and environment, power and inequality.
This course covers the innovative changes that have been brought about in Archaeology and Heritage Studies by new technologies and methodological approaches. Remote sensing data analysis, augmented reality, machine learning software, online collaborative platforms, and 3D tools are revolutionizing the way in which data is collected, managed, conserved, and disseminated. A combination of a survey of cutting-edge digital methods and applications, select case studies from Eurasia, and hands-on sessions enables students to gain a good understanding of the potential of digital tools. Prerequisite: ARCH B233.
Introduces students to a nearly intact archaeological site whose destruction by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. was recorded by contemporaries. The discovery of Pompeii in the mid-1700s had an enormous impact on 18th- and 19th-century views of the Roman past as well as styles and preferences of the modern era. Informs students in classical antiquity, urban life, city structure, residential architecture, home decoration and furnishing, wall painting, minor arts and craft and mercantile activities within a Roman city.
This course explores the intersections of gender and archaeology in Western Asia during the pre-Islamic periods. It examines how diverse social groups use multiple means to construct, perform, and negotiate gender, sex, identities. The course discusses gender's intricate relationship with class, sexuality, and religion through analysis of texts, visual representations, spatial organization, and other material traces of the past. Grounded in the tradition of gender archaeology, this course draws on various discourses and interpretive frameworks to offer new archaeological approaches for understanding and discussing gender dynamics in both past and present societies.
This course explores Greek and Roman mythology using an archaeological and art historical approach, focusing on the ways in which the traditional tales of the gods and heroes were depicted, developed and transmitted in the visual arts such as vase painting and architectural sculpture, as well as projected into the natural environment.
Have you ever wondered how something as unassuming as scent can shape entire civilizations? This course explores the silent power of smell and its influence on how societies interpret concepts like power and being. We’ll begin by examining how scent affects daily life in the US. With activities like scent walks and experiments, you’ll discover how smell shapes our ideas about medicine, relationships, and wealth. Meanwhile, we’ll dive into the fragrant world of the ancient Mediterranean, exploring how the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans, and the early Abrahamic religions perceived scent and its entanglement with their belief systems, social lives, and power negotiations.
Modern medicine is built on more than 5,000 years of history—an intricate and entangled story of how humans have tried to understand, heal, and transform the world around them. Along the way, the boundaries between medicine, magic, science, religion, and philosophy have constantly shifted. What does it mean to know something? Where does religion end and science begin?
The pyramids, tombs, and mummies uncovered in Egypt’s earliest excavations conjured a dazzling—if romanticized—vision of the “Land of the Pharaohs.” Today, archaeology continues to peel back the layers of myth, revealing not only pharaohs and temples but also the daily lives of workers and Egypt’s far-reaching Mediterranean connections. This course explores how both early and modern excavations have shaped our understanding of the “Gift of the Nile,” while reminding us that many mysteries remain. To situate these discoveries, we will trace the reception of ancient Egypt across time: in its original setting, through the eyes of early explorers and antiquarians, and as imagined by modern audiences. Along the way, we’ll test how Egypt has been re-packaged in film clips, video games, and even VR experiences—asking why Egypt continues to capture the global imagination, and what that fascination reveals about us today.
This course explores the principles and methodologies of landscape archaeology, examining how past communities have consciously and unconsciously shaped their environments and physical space. Through a combination of archaeological and historical evidence, students will investigate the cultural, economic, religious, and social practices that influenced landscape organization and the construction and maintenance of space in the ancient world. The course will also examine how natural surroundings have, in turn, shaped and modified socio-economic structures, and symbolic expressions. Focusing on the Mediterranean and South-West Asia, primarily, the course also aims to equipping students with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills essential for understanding the long-terms dynamics and the complex relationship between people and their environments across time and space.
This course is an introduction to the world of painted pottery of the Greek world, from the 10th to the 4th centuries B.C.E. We will interpret these images from an art-historical and socio-economic viewpoint. We will also explore how these images relate to other forms of representation. Prerequisite: one course in classical archaeology or permission of instructor.
This course explores the rise and fall of the first international age in the eastern mediterranean. We will focus on the cultural and diplomatic connections between Egypt, Syria, Anatolia and the Aegean during the Bronze Age, c. 2000-1200BCE.. Prerequisites: ARCH B101 and 102; ARCH B101 and a 200-level ARCH course; or ARCH B102 and a 200-level ARCH course; or two 200-level ARCH courses; or permission by instructor.
Imperialism has long been a central topic in archaeological research, with the Roman Empire in particular occupying an especially prominent place. Yet the earliest empires in recorded history emerged in the ancient Near East (including Egypt), and the region was very often either an imperial core or subject to foreign rule. It is thus an especially fascinating place to consider how archaeologists study empires. Earlier generations of scholars tended to see ancient imperialism as either a civilizing force or as Oriental despotism, depending on who was dominating whom. Since the era of modern decolonization, however, scholars have employed a range of new approaches, drawing, for example, on landscape archaeology, world-system analysis, entanglement and globalization, that go beyond the simple dichotomy of ruler and ruled. Instead, they focus on how imperialism transformed social, economic and political structures and how various imperial subjects experienced and reacted to empire in diverse ways. In this course we will examine Egyptian, Hittite, Assyrian, Achaemenid, Greek, Parthian and Sasanian imperialism in light of these new approaches, with a view towards understanding what archaeology can teach us about ancient empires.
Issues of trade, commerce and production of export goods are addressed with regard to the Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures of Mesopotamia, Arabia, Iran and south Asia. Crucial to these systems is the development of means of transport via maritime routes and on land. Archaeological evidence for traded goods and shipwrecks is used to map the emergence of sea-faring across the Indian Ocean and Gulf.
This course examines the impact – or lack thereof – the Roman Empire had on the visual and material culture in the Eastern Mediterranean and South-West Asia from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE. To understand the local response to Rome’s expansion, we study the complex political and social structures that were in place in these regions long before the arrival of Rome as well as the agents that continuously negotiated between Rome, local polities, and external factors (i.e., nomadic tribes). We will explore the multi-faceted world of the easternmost provinces of the Roman Empire with reference to archaeological, visual, and textual sources and adopt counter-narrative approaches to critically discuss the nature of colonial and imperial encounters. The completion of ARCH B101 (Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology) or 102 (Classical Archaeology) is a prerequisite for this course.
How did the past feel, smell, sound, taste, and move? This graduate seminar explores the role of the senses in archaeological thought and practice. We examine how sensory experiences shaped ancient lifeways and how archaeologists today reconstruct—or invent—those experiences through theory, method, and imagination. Readings draw from archaeology, anthropology, history, and sensory studies, with special attention to embodiment, perception, colonial legacies, and the politics of interpretation. Students will engage critically with key debates while experimenting with creative, multisensory approaches to primary sources. Weekly reading journals, seminar discussions, and a hands-on midterm project will build toward a final project that explores how the sensory might shift archaeological storytelling, pedagogy, or public engagement. Throughout, we ask: Whose senses are centered? What senses are valued, and why? And what is at stake when trying to sense the past? Prerequisite: ARCH B101 and ARCH B102 or ARCH B101 and a 200-level ARCH course, or ARCH B102 and a 200-level ARCH course, or two 200-level ARCH courses, or permission by instructor.
Death is a shared human experience; however, it provokes a huge variety of responses; from the ad hoc and hasty burial of the deceased through to elaborate and lengthy funerary rituals. One of the most direct forms of evidence we have for the people who lived thousands of years ago are burials; vestiges of once living people. The burial record, however, raises as many questions as it does answers. Moreover, significant debate exists around what constitutes respectful treatment of the dead. Primarily focusing on case studies from Western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, this upper-level undergraduate/graduate seminar will draw upon archaeological and anthropological literature to explore the different ways in which mortuary archaeology can inform us on wider socio-cultural phenomenon. We will also explore the complex and multifaceted ethical issues around studying the dead. What role do (or can) the ancient dead play in contemporary society?
Archaeology offers a unique perspective to study and analyze how past inequalities developed over time, how they were maintained, negated, or transformed, and how societies responded to them or rejected them. Drawing upon different sets of data- including visual and material culture as well as bio-archaeological remains – and employing anthropological, social, and critical theory approaches, this course explores inequalities with reference to society, ethnicity, gender, and economy. We will use a wide range of case studies across the ancient Mediterranean, from Prehistory to Late Antiquity, to explore different trajectories of inequality and their manifestations in large-scale and long-term phenomena of war, economic crises, environmental transformation, and colonialism. Prerequisite(s): ARCH B101 and 102; or ARCH B101 and a 200-level ARCH course; or ARCH B102 and a 200-level ARCH course; or two 200-level ARCH courses
Centered on the question, how we can learn from and through objects, this course explores a selected corpus of artifacts from the ancient Mediterranean in the Bryn Mawr Special Collections with the aim to uncover how these objects were made and used and what they might have meant to their ancient users. Students will handle, study, and interpret a variety of artifacts made of clay, metal, stone, and glass, ranging from vessels, mirrors, and statuettes to mosaics and frescoes used originally in a variety of contexts of ancient Mediterranean daily life and spanning now their second-life as constituents of the Bryn Mawr Special Collections. Through close observation and analysis of the procurement and trade of the raw materials of these objects and their manufacturing techniques and decoration, including its themes, which extend from daily scenes and mythological tales to colorful abstract motifs and intriguing inscriptions, students will examine the use and function of these artifacts as evidence of meaningful ancient Mediterranean cultural thought, behavior, and experience. Interpretation will be based on close observation and active and experiential learning, through tactile engagement with these objects, comparing and contrasting them, studying their conservation, and inquiring, through deep critical thinking, archival work, and reflexivity, about their provenience, collecting, and digital itineraries. Prerequisites: ARCH B101 and B102.
In this course we shall investigate the ancient world through one of its most fundamental institutions: money. We will learn about different types of ancient money, including coinage, bullion, grain and credit, the various coins used by the Greeks and Romans (as well as other groups, such as ancient Mesopotamians, Persians, Indians and Jews), and about the different methods used to study them. The seminar takes an interdisciplinary approach to major topics in the history of money, including the origins of coinage, monetization, imitations and forgeries, debasement, trade, and the politics of issuing coins. We shall think about economics and social history, as well as the role played by coins in archaeology, and the complex ethical (and legal) issues surrounding the modern practice of coin collecting.
Following the campaigns of Alexander, the Greeks spread across the Middle East as far as Egypt, Central Asia and India, where they encountered many cultures vastly different from their own. The result was the creation of a diverse, multicultural world, connected by shared elements such as the use of the Greek language, but in which every individual region and society was unique. This diversity is especially evident in the art produced in this period, where we see the Greek obsession with human form, preferably nude, mixing with older artistic traditions in Egypt and Mesopotamia that relied on hierarchy and repetition to perform their functions. In Italy the Romans adopted aspects of Greek art as a means of disrupting their rather stodgy political ideology, with mixed results, whereas in India Greek motifs, popular for reasons as yet unknown, were pressed into the service of Buddhism. In this course we shall examine the art of this dynamic period from ca. 300 to 30 BCE. It is organized geographically, beginning in the Greek mainland and moving across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe to Iran, Central Asia and India. We will focus especially on themes of interaction – how do old and new artistic traditions combine? – and identity – what did these combinations mean to the people who made and used them? – as well as on the roles of power and resistance. Prerequisites: ARCH B101 and 102; or ARCH B101 and a 200-level ARCH course; or ARCH B102 and a 200-level ARCH course; or two 200-level ARCH courses; or permission by instructor.
A weekly seminar on topics to be determined with assigned readings and oral and written reports.
A weekly seminar on common topics with assigned readings and oral and written reports.
Supervised Work
Note: Students are eligible to take up to two Praxis Fieldwork Seminars or Praxis Independent Studies during their time at Bryn Mawr.
This seminar explores the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna as a case study in how we construct, contest, and sometimes overstate claims about the ancient past. Often hailed as a city of radical reform— both a religious and social 'revolution', Amarna offers a rich but problematic archive. Through close engagement with archaeological evidence, texts, spatial analysis, and broader comparative material, students will assess whether the city truly marked a break from ancient Egyptian tradition or simply reshaped old ideas in new clothes. Topics include urbanism, ideology, monumentality, daily ritual, economy, identity, and landscape. Additionally, we will investigate how modern narratives, from popular media to scholarly literature, have sustained the myth of Amarna’s uniqueness, while reflecting on the consequences of historical myth-making. Open to students across ancient studies, the course invites critical reflection on how knowledge is produced, and how cities, ideologies, and people get flattened into historical “firsts”.
Source: Haverford College's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 59
