Stepping Out of the Campus Bubble

This spring, Anthropology 418 students didn’t just sit and take notes in their classroom. Students in “Lab Methods: Ceramic Analysis” visited a local pottery, made their own ceramics, cooked traditional meals over open fires, and held ancient pottery in their hands.

The class traveled to Pittsboro in February to visit Mark Hewitt, an artist who creates wood-fired, salt-glazed pottery. The class also saw a demonstration of a technique called coiling, presented by Joe Herbert, a retired archaeologist at the UNC Art Lab. Lecturer Rachel Briggs, who studies foodways, instructed students on how to cook traditional recipes in earthenware pots.

“Many archaeological interpretations are based on pottery, and this course gives them an understanding of how ancient pottery was made, how it was used, and what one can learn from the fragments one finds archaeologically,” said Vin Steponaitis, William E. Leuchtenburg Distinguished Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Carolina.

Steponaitis says making Anthropology 418 experiential is key to creating a solid foundation for future archaeologists. “Carolina is a research university, and research and teaching are inextricably linked, which is especially true in archaeology,” Steponaitis said. “Archaeology is always done in teams… This course is just one example of the experiential opportunities that you should find across all archaeology pursuits.”

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