Tracks and Options

After completing required courses within the anthropology core, students can elect to focus on one area or take courses in different areas within the major. There are three informal tracks in which students may wish to concentrate their studies. These are:

• Archaeology: The exploration of human prehistory through evidence of past human activities.
• Biocultural Anthropology: The study of the evolution and adaptation of the human species, non-human primates, and modern human populations.
• Sociocultural Anthropology: The study of culture broadly conceived, including language and symbolic systems, practices, and identities.

In addition to these tracks there are also three formal options. Students must apply to be admitted to the Medical Anthropology and Global Health option and the Anthropology of Globalization option. The Archaeological Sciences option is non-competitive. The options are:

• Medical Anthropology and Global Health: The study of topics relating to health, illness, and healing from sociocultural, biocultural, clinically applied, public health, and other related perspectives. Click here for the application form.
• Anthropology of Globalization: The study of today's increasingly interconnected and multicultural world, focusing on both contemporary and historical patterns of global exchange. Click here for the application form.
• Archaeological Sciences: The rigorous study of archaeological methods and theory that concentrates on the relationships between the material traces of human activity and the actions and natural processes that result in these traces. This is a non-competitive option and no application is necessary.

All of these fields are represented in the department's curriculum and in the research of faculty members.