FACILITIES & Resources
Archaeological and Ethnological Labs are currently located on the 3rd floor of Smith Hall and in the basement of Old Main. The Anthropology Program is establishing a more stable location for these valuable collections of artifacts with storage, lab, and display space as well as a seminar room. Many of the archaeological artifacts in our collection have come to us through the work of students in the Marshall University Archaeological Field School (see below).
Drinko Library – A dynamic resource, providing books, journals and periodical, online databases, e-z-borrow, 24/7 computer lab/reading room, digital technology, and access to the world. There are other libraries on/off campus including the Morrow stacks and Federal Depository, the Health Science Library, Smith Music Hall Library, and the Mu Graduate College Library on the So. Charleston, WV campus. You may want to see the Drinko Library page on resources for sociology and anthropology. Of particular interest to anthropologists are the Human Relations Area Files.
Computing Services – You will find computing facilities all around the Marshall campus. Graduate students can use computers in Harris, Smith and Corbly Halls, the Drinko Library and the Memorial Student Center. All PCs are equipped with popular software applications such as MS Office Suite (Access, Excel, Front Page, Power Point, Project, Publisher, Visio and Word), as well as statistical programs such as SPSS, and SAS.
MURC – Marshall University Research Corporation assists in grant development and administration. This links to MURC , other campus Research Centers, the Office for Research Integrity, Institutional Review Board (IRB), and related information.
MU-Advance – Established to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers. Check here often for listings for student funding and other opportunities to enhance your research experience.
The
Oral History of Appalachia Collection
is housed in
the Marshall University Morrow Library Special Collections Department. It
is comprised of thousands of interviews conducted in Appalachia over the last 40
years. Many interviews have full transcriptions available.
The West Virginia Collection is a regional collection of published materials that deals with West Virginia and surrounding states, particularly Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. The collection also emphasizes the Appalachian Region, as well as the American Civil War. The collection includes books, journals, state documents, newspapers, a vertical file of newspaper clippings and pamphlets, maps, phone books, and microforms.
A graduate student study area and seminar room are located on the 5th floor of Smith Hall, rooms 527 & 528.
New Journal Launched at Marshall
Collaborative Anthropologies is a journal meant to engage the growing and ever-widening discussion of collaborative research and practice in anthropology and in closely related fields. Published annually, the journal:
- facilitates dialogue about collaborative anthropologies, including but not limited to those between and among researchers and their interlocutors, anthropologists and other scholars/practitioners, academics and other professionals, universities and local communities, faculty and students;
- embraces a special focus on the collaborative research between and among researchers and communities of informants/consultants/collaborators, but is by no means limited to this focus;
- promotes discussion about new forms of collaborative research that are engendering new kinds of collaborative anthropologies;
- charts new theoretical and methodological approaches, especially those that theorize collaboration and imagine new intellectual spaces for collaborative anthropologies;
- invites essays that are descriptive as well as analytical/interpretive/exploratory;
- solicits works from all subfields of anthropology (and closely related disciplines);
- encourages interdisciplinary inquiry into collaborative anthropologies, especially those that connect collaborative anthropologies with other modes of collaborative research practices;
- seeks a diversity of perspectives on collaborative research, including those academic, applied, and pedagogic;
- considers scholarship from single to multi-sited in scope and from all parts of the world; and
- includes book/media/exhibit reviews that chronicle the creative and innovative use of collaboration in anthropology and closely related fields.
Edited by Luke Eric Lassiter, Director of the Graduate Humanities Program at the Marshall University Graduate College in Charleston, WV. Dr. Lassiter is an affiliate of the Anthropology Program.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELDSCHOOL
Archaeology, the science of reconstructing and
understanding past and present cultures from their material remains, is taught
in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at
The sites investigated by the field school in the last twenty plus years cover the span of human occupation in West Virginia, from the Early Archaic, at St-Albans (ca. 6000 BCE, Kanawha County), through the Late Prehistoric, at Snidow (ca. 1250 CE, Mercer County) and Clover (ca. 1580 CE, Cabell County), to the historic period, at the Madie Carroll House in Guyandotte (ca. 1850 CE, Cabell County). In addition to gaining practical knowledge of archaeological field techniques, students learn about our state’s long past, from the earliest Native American nomadic foragers and their journey towards becoming settled farmers, to the first Euro-American and African-American colonists who established the communities we live in today.
No previous experience is required to enroll in ANT 323, only an interest of things past, a curiosity of how we got to where we are today, and a taste for detective work. And yes, getting very dirty in the process. It is hard work, often tedious, but always rewarding.
For more information, contact Dr. Nicholas Freidin, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Smith Hall Room 428/424 or call (304) 696-2794.
