In Ruins: Traces of the Past in the Present

Ruins -- the debris and skeletons of monuments from the past -- constitute the leftovers of people and places that once were. Yet archaeologists have not thought critically about this seemingly essential concept. Ruins and ruination are fundamental to deeper understandings of culture contact, the rise and fall of civilizations, state power and political factionalism, urbanism, colonialism, capitalism, and deindustrialization. This course will examine, across a broad geographic and temporal scope, ruins as things, as well as ongoing processes, that affect the landscape.