Bioarch of African Diaspora

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course offers an introduction to bioarchaeology as a theoretically grounded and historically situated anthropological practice through a survey of burial sites across the African diaspora. A critical component of this class looks to the ethnographic, biohistorical, and archaeological work on the Black diaspora inform us about assumptions and interpretations concerning the race, ancestry, and human origins. Students will engage the ways that racialized difference impacts research designs within the bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and forensic anthropology from a global perspective and confront current debates around research directions for current and future projects. Lectures will explore the politics of excavation, curation, and preservation across various sites of death throughout the wide geographical breadth of the African diaspora across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Intersecting themes covered include gender, identity, religion, and ethics in relation to the material record. Course material will span articles, site reports, catalogs, documentary films and other multimedia sources.