TAKE THIS CLASS. Professor Schachner was amazing. You can just tell from the way he talks how much respect he has for others and is just an incredible person. Why you should trust my review? I'm from south campus and took this just wanting the easy A. It was an easy A but also was very interesting and kinda makes me want to minor in archaeology now.

Grading: An essay every other week based on the previous two weeks material. Roughly 700 words each and he drops the worst one aka if you do well you only have to do 4 short essays out of the 5. Also participation in discussion is mandatory but my TA (Eden Franz) always had an engaging discussion filled with extra tidbits which was interesting and helped with the essays. Basically just 4 essays and show up.

This class covers the dawn of humanity up until the conquistadors disrupted American civilizations and focused on how material culture and sites explain human behavior. I always associated archaeology with Indiana Jones as in find some cool shiny stuff and put it in a museum but this class really focused on the humans behind the objects. My mind was absolutely blown with how cool the past actually is. We watched how stone tools were made (called flint knapping!) which changed my perspective from dumb humans hit some rocks together to actually viewing them as skilled craftsmen who carefully fine-tuned their tools. We also learned a little about what research is like as Prof. used his own pictures to teach us what surveying is and the other tools archaeologists use in the field. This class also tackled the importance of archaeology today and how to respectfully work with the direct descendants of the artifacts/sites studied, aka how to not continually shit on native and First Nation people. We covered some modern policies that help them reclaim the bones and artifacts that we stole from them as well as the struggle between science and respect. This class just brought up so many different points that forced my mindset to open as I had to imagine who the people behind shiny objects were and I highly highly recommend if you wanna learn about cool things without the stress of a grade.

This class was still online for me Fall 2021 with in-person discussions and a few virtual discussions. I was in the virtual discussion.

The class was easy enough. 5 shorts papers with the lowest grade being dropped along with discussion attendance making up your grade. I would definitely take the class again if I could.

Only downside was that the professor did not have the best mic quality and I often felt like someone was screaming in my ear when watching lectures.

The lectures were 100% remote this quarter, and were posted asynchronously. He broke them up into shorter videos, which was very helpful. The lectures can be a bit monotonous at times, and I lost interest in the material towards the end, but overall this class is an easy GE. There are five "quizzes," which are 700 word essays which you have a couple of days to complete. He drops the lowest score, so you can skip on altogether if you want to. I was able to finish the class 2 weeks early because of this, as the final was just the fifth quiz. I found the discussions to be very interesting. I definitely recommend taking this if you're looking for an easy GE with a light workload, it was about half as much work as my other classes.

This class is really hard to engage with if archaeology is to ur favorite thing in the world. There’s like 10 readings a week and no payoff for doing them. There’s no exam - just essays of different sorts but he’s a pretty harsh grader. He is rly just interested in the subject, he doesnt really care about helping you be interested or getting his students engaged. Not the worst class to take, but ur better off taking a larger lecture if this isn’t ur niche interest. Otherwise it will be painful to even show up to class some days.

Took this while still in online format. Course consisted of 5 exams throughout the quarter, one of which you could drop. Your best four exams were worth 80% and just going to section was 20%. Exams were 2 page short essays that you had three days to complete. Solid GE. Lectures were not very engaging but material was interesting at points. Recommend 100% Schachner a G