The mission of the anthropology major and minor degrees is twofold: (1) the promotion of cross-cultural and international understanding and (2) the advancement of knowledge about the human condition. Our primary concern across subdisciplines and geographical areas is with human heritage—material and intangible, past, present and future. Our mission goals are met by way of teaching, research and service to the university, state, region and profession of anthropology.

Faculty

The anthropology program has four faculty members with varying research interests and areas of specialization. The anthropology faculty provide expertise in specialties such as archaeology, cultural heritage, ethnohistory, African disaspora, Colonial slave plantations, settlement pattern studies, GIS, and paleoenvironments. They cover regional studies in North America, the Caribbean, the Oceania/Pacific Islands, and the United States.
The research efforts of the anthropology faculty are constantly integrated with the teaching process to bring new information and approaches to the classroom. This integration makes the classroom experience of majors and graduate students vibrant and dynamic. Faculty research activities also can provide students with valuable pre-professional experience as research assistants.

Laboratories

Students can pursue opportunities to work in the Archaeology Materials Lab as part of their course work, or in some cases, as paid research assistants. Materials from archaeological field studies are processed and analyzed in the lab. Students may also work with LiDAR and GIS data as part of research projects on human settlement patterns.