Archaeology major to be offered in fall 2009

By: Giselle Chang

Posted: 11/20/08

Undergraduate Hopkins students will be able to pursue a new major in archaeology as soon as the Maryland Higher Education Commission grants its approval.

Near Eastern Studies Professor Glenn Schwartz, who will be co-directing the new major with Alan Shapiro, stressed his own vision of the major not only as intensifying the humanities offering at Hopkins but also involving the social and natural sciences.

Although Hopkins is waiting for accreditation from the state, Schwartz and Shapiro have stated that the faculty is in place and they hope to implement the new major next fall.

"It's a major that is a bridge between the different branches of scholarships," he said. "Archaeology is perfect for Johns Hopkins which is so interdisciplinary because the natural sciences play such an integral part."

Shapiro said many professors wanted to offer students another option of study in addition to the opportunities in the Classics and Near Eastern Studies departments that would span many departments.

Schwartz and Shapiro will also head the Committee for the Archaeology Major, which is made up of professors from various departments.

The new major was inspired in part by the University's new plans to renovate its Archaeological Collection as part of the Gilman Hall renovation.

"We all realized that the University had acquired a critical mass of faculty interested in archaeology," Schwartz said.

The Classics Department hopes students will become interested in the Classics through the new major.

"From our point of view in the Classics Department we hope to bring students into the study of ancient Greece and Rome via the archaeology," Shapiro said.

"We have not traditionally offered a broad introductory archaeology course the way that Glenn [Schwartz] has with the Near Eastern department so we hope that students doing the archaeology major will choose Greek and Rome as their special area."

While a number of new courses will be added specifically for the Archeology major, a wide range of courses that are already offered in departments such as History of Art, Anthropology and Geography and Environmental Engineering will also be able to fulfill the major requirements.

"Even professors from the medical school who teach relevant courses with analysis of human skeletal material are part of the major," Schwartz said.

"We want to leverage the resources of Hopkins with faculty in several different departments who are working in archaeology globally," Shapiro said.

These courses range from Environmental History and Primate Behavior to Ancient Andean Art and Roman Civilization.

As a precursor to the major, last year Hopkins offered a course jointly with the Maryland Institute College of Art called "Ancient City of the Future."

"It involved making computer-generated architectural models of ancient cities," Schwartz said.

Emily Carambelas, a current sophomore who heard about the major through her academic advisor, said that she was drawn to this major because of its interdisciplinary nature.

"You don't need a foreign language and it's not focused on a certain geographic area," she said.

"You can focus on computer mapping or working with preservation; it's really nice to get into other areas besides geography."

Having loved all the courses that she has taken so far, Carambelas has decided to major in archaeology and hopes to find work through a museum.

Shapiro also pointed out the relatively new graduate program in classical art and archaeology, an interdisciplinary PhD program run between the Classics and History of Art Departments, now in its second year as impetus for the new undergraduate archaeology major.

According to Shapiro, professors including Schwartz and Raymond Westbrook of the Near Eastern Department noted the success of the graduate program adding that there was a lot of interest in archaeology among the undergraduates as well.