Expert: Ralph Salier - 11/2/2006

Question
Hello, I'm currently a junior and thinking of majoring in Archeology. I'm very confused to what colleges in Massachusetts offers archeology, especially with my financial situation. What schools do you think would be best?

Sincerely,
Julia

Answer
Hi Julia,

If you want to stay in Mass. Then Boston U, Brandise, Harvard,Tufts, U of M Amherst and Boston.
U of Conn in Storrs
Yale in New Haven CT
Brown in RI

All have good undergrad programs. But!!!

What kind of archaeology do you want to study?  This could have a bearing on where you want to go.  All of these schools are fairly expensive.  You may want to consider out of state like U of Arizona or U of Texas at Austin or U of Oklahoma.  These schools also have good programs and for instance out of state tuition at U of O is 13K per year.

Tell me what area of archaeology you want to study and I'll be more then happy to provide some more direction.

Areas of Archaeology:

1) Dirt archaeology where you dig for stuff and it doesn't matter where
2) Paleobotany
3) Osteology
4) Paleo-ecology
5) limnology and archeo-geology

Then, what age period/area?:

1) North American Historic
2) NA prehistoric
3) Archaeology of  the Americas (NA, CA, SA)
4) European
5) African
6) Asian
7) Pacific Islands
8) Atlantic/Carribean Islands

These are all areas of specilization which you will need  to begin focusing on in college.  The reason being is that you will want to tie the Anthropology/Ethnology into the Archaeology you want to do.  Does little good to study African cultures if you don't plan to dig there unless you are interested in Historic Archaeology of the Americas since black slaves were brought from Africa and having the ethnographic background for modern African peoples may have some benefit in doing the archaeology of historic sites.

Hope this makes some sense.  Please let me know if I can help you further.