Started by the preeminent Julian H. Steward, Donald Lathrap, and Charles Bareis, the archaeology program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has traditionally emphasized strong training in archaeological methodologies, comparative approaches, theory, and fieldwork. Archaeology is concerned with the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of the material remains of past cultures and societies. Archaeologists seek to understand how humans in the past created and interacted with their social and natural environments, and to conserve this history for present and future learning. Our program offers B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees, including a new M.A. track concentrating on Cultural Heritage and Landscape studies, offered in conjunction with the Department of Landscape Architecture. Our graduate program provides students with in-depth training and education in a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to archaeological investigations.

Our department archaeologists, including Drs. Stanley Ambrose, Christopher Fennell, Barry Lewis, Lisa Lucero, Timothy Pauketat, Helaine Silverman, and Olga Soffer, maintain active research programs in historic, contact, and prehistoric period sites located in the United States, India, Peru, eastern Africa, and eastern Europe. Our graduate students are currently undertaking doctoral research throughout the world. More than a dozen other archaeologists are affiliated as adjunct faculty or as faculty and staff with other departments and programs at the University of Illinois, including the program in Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials (ATAM).

Archaeology faculty regularly offer an array of methods courses (Archaeometry, Lithic Analysis, Ceramic Analysis, Surveying Techniques, GIS, Quantitative Analysis), regional survey courses (Africa, Central America, Central Andes, Europe, prehistoric and historic period North America), topical courses (Cultural Heritage Management, Museum Studies, Historical Archaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Maya and Aztec Archaeology) and theory courses (History of Archaeology, Archaeological Theory, Chiefdoms, Social Construction of Space). In addition, theory seminars are offered on a wide array of topics. In recent years, these seminars have included subjects such as: Advanced Archaeological Methods, Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Complexity, Archaeological Theory -- An European Perspective, Chiefdoms and Early States, Human Evolutionary Ecology, Peruvian Archaeology, Mississippian Archaeology, Origins of Modern Humans, and Prehistory of Europe.

We offer many opportunities for students to conduct research with faculty in our archaeology labs and in our extensive research collections. A number of our faculty are conducting multi-year research programs in historic and prehistoric period archaeology, funded by grants from sources such as the National Science Foundation. For examples of long-term research projects and related training opportunities, read about our archaeological field schools in Cahokia and New Philadelphia Illinois, and at Yalbec in Belize.

The Anthropology Department Stable Isotope Laboratory (129 Davenport Hall) and Mass Spectrometry Laboratory (31 Natural Resources Building), directed by Dr. Ambrose, provide facilities and opportunities for students to conduct research on reconstruction of prehistoric diets, climates and environments by analysis of bones, shells, plants and soils. The Lithic Technology lab contains comparative reference collections and resources for high magnification use-wear analysis. Dr. Ambrose also conducts archaeological, isotopic, and geoarchaeological field research in the Kenya and Ethiopia Rift Valley on the environmental context of early hominids, and the origin of modern human behavior.

Dr. Lewis currently focuses his research projects on regions of South India, where he is working on several projects concerning the dynamics of social stratification in the period of 1500-1800 AD. His research designs include uses of spatial modeling and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to organize and interpret archaeological and architectural data. Among other courses and research efforts, he has provided students with in-depth training in qualitative and quantitative research methods, and the use of spatial models and GIS in the interpretation of data, through which students can take advantage of the University's extensive GIS Computer Lab facilities (202 Lincoln Hall).

Dr. Lucero, includes undergraduate and graduate students in field and lab projects. She works with students interested in the Ancient Maya, Mesoamerican cultures, complex societies, political systems, ritual and politics, and water management. Dr. Lucero currently is exploring the politics of temple construction in complex societies. Worldwide, various groups use temples as political arenas to attract supporters. The role of Classic Maya temples (c. A.D. 250-850) is not so clear. All major centers have several temples, but it is not known if royals built them all, or if other groups did as well, or whether the Maya built them for specific gods. Dr. Lucero is exploring this topic; her field goals for the next few years include the collection of data from the six temples at the Maya center of Yalbac as part of the Valley of Peace Archaeology (VOPA) project in central Belize.

Graduate and undergraduate students conduct research in Dr. Pauketat's North American lab (196 Davenport Hall). His more recent research projects focus on regional archaeological investigations in the American Bottom and upper Midwest, exploring dynamics of large-scale changes to everyday life during the Mississippian period, and change over time in social practices under conditions of resettlement and physical displacement created by the impacts of urbanization at key centers such as Cahokia. In just the past few years, Dr. Pauketat has directed excavations at several large village sites and homesteads dating from the 9th through 13th centuries AD. These have been excavated with field school students and crews funded by the National Science Foundation. The analysis of the site-locational data along with the remains from over 250 domestic structures and numerous pits and midden areas excavated at these sites is being facilitated by the development of an Arcview GIS model.

Our archaeology faculty working in foreign countries facilitate fieldwork opportunities in those countries for graduate students in our program. Dr. Silverman pursues a diversity of research efforts focusing on South America, including a social, comparative and landscape analysis of modern-era cemeteries in Peru, investigations focusing on the social construction of space, and analysis of the dynamics involved in development of domestic and international archaeological tourism in Peru. These latter efforts include studies of the competing interests and ideologies in archaeological heritage management that promote and protect ruins in the context of tourism as a globalized industry.

Dr. Soffer focuses her research on ancestral lifeways in the Pleistocene period of Eurasia, reconstructing what they were and why they changed through time. Her ongoing projects investigate the diversity of hunter-gatherer cultural practices during the Late Paleolithic as well as research concerning Neanderthal populations in earlier periods. Dr. Soffer investigates the various components of these lifeways by focusing on subsistence practices, technologies, settlement patters, socio-political relationships, and the material expressions of past ideologies.

Undergraduate and graduate students can also utilize research opportunities provided through Dr. Fennell's Historical Archaeology lab (296 Davenport Hall). His research efforts include the development of interpretative frameworks focusing on regional systems theories, African diaspora studies, theories concerning ethnicities and racialization, stylistic and symbolic analysis of material culture, and the significance of consumption patterns. Dr. Fennell's projects include a multi-year research project concerning the social history of New Philadelphia, Illinois, a demographically integrated town founded by a free African American in 1836. This project offers archaeology field schools each summer, including one funded by the National Science Foundation's grant program for Research Experiences for Undergraduates. This archaeology project achieved the recent addition of the entire town site of New Philadelphia to the National Register of Historic Places as a nationally significant archaeological resource. Read more about our Department's Historical Archaeology program.

Research opportunities and space for curating and analyzing collections are also provided by the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program (ITARP) and the Public Service Archaeology Program (PSAP). ITARP, directed by Dr. Thomas E. Emerson, has 12,000 cubic feet of archaeological materials from over 3,000 Illinois sites, including historically important collections made by A.R. Kelly and Warren K. Moorehead from the world heritage and state historic site of Cahokia, early Hopewell mound excavations in the Illinois River valley by Moorehead and John McGregor, from the massive American Bottom FAI-270 Project collections, and from more recent work at sites such as Hoxie Farm and the East St. Louis Mound Center. The Illinois Geological Survey also maintains facilities on the University campus for isotope analysis, such as radiocarbon dating techniques.

Additional collections of archival and artifactual materials from Illinois and elsewhere are curated by the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, formerly directed by Dr. Douglas Brewer, the University Archives, University Library, and Krannert Art Museum. The Krannert collection includes ancient Peruvian pottery covering the major pre-Columbian periods. The Department of Anthropology also engages in public outreach efforts, participates in the annual Illinois Archaeology Awareness program, and hosts a number of internet resources concerning public history and civic engagement in archaeology. We also host the African Diaspora Archaeology Network and Newsletter.

We invite you to contact the Anthropology office or any one of the above named faculty and staff for more information on Archaeology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Students interested in applying for admission to our graduate program can also consult our online guidelines and forms.