Dr. Heckenberger
| This course is about the global study of human culture from its origins to the present-day through the recovery, description, and analysis of archaeological remains. The main focus of the course will be to understand the richness of human societies in the context of their spatial variation in the landscape and the depth of time that the study of the archaeological record offers. We will explore the expansion of human beings in their appropriation of space and territories until they colonized every niche of the globe. We will examine how the inventions and innovations of technologies had and have a direct effect on the rise of civilizations and territorial expansion of humans. We will investigate what the domesticaiton of plants and animals meant for different societies around the planet, and the condequences of food production or agriculture in terms of demographics of the world. We will explore the meaning of human population growth in relation to the planet’s resources, and the relationship between humans and the environment in the process of colonization and appropriation of space in time. This basic knowledge will be constructed by using case studies that illustrate the arguments presented, and we will give the general basis for more detailed studies of the meaning of our actions on a global scale in the past and present. As actors in the past and present, we shape the environment and transform the way that we live and continue changing the world. |