FACILITIES & Resources
Archaeological and Ethnological Labs are in the Basement of the Old Main building (OM B12 & B14). The Anthropology Program maintains a 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.
Center for Ethnographic and Oral History Research -- Our own Dr. Brian Hoey serves as Director of what will soon become West Virginia's first centralized, university-based, interdisciplinary research facility with the staff, expertise, and resources to conduct and disseminate ethnographic and oral history research. The Center will be a research cooperative competing for external grant opportunities focused on conducting high quality ethnographic and oral history research projects. Such research would be supported by various governmental and nongovernmental agencies.
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. The Department also maintains several computers for student use in room 527 Smith Hall.
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.
Office of the Vice President for Research – Through various organizations, such as the Marshall University Research Corporation, other campus Research Centers, the Office for Research Integrity, and Institutional Review Board (IRB), this office provides support for research at Marshall.
Oral History of Appalachia Collection – The 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 – 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 and undergraduate student study area and seminar room are located on the 5th floor of Smith Hall, rooms 527 & 528.
Older & Wiser Letter Project (OWL)
The Fall 2009 Sociology of Aging class invites Marshall Alumni age 50 and older to write personal letters that contain stories, advice and other life wisdom to current college students. The letters should give insight on what the writers know now that they wish they would have known when they were in their 20s. Letters can be of any length and should include a photo of yourself in your 20s. Letters are being accepted until November 1, 2009.
Letters can be mailed or emailed to Dr. Sullivan at Marshall University. Please see the OWL website for more information.
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. The Marshall University Archaeological Field School as been written up. Check out the MU-AFS in the Parthenon.
