Undergraduate Program

The Stanford Archaeology Center offers an undergraduate major or minor for students to pursue.

The Archaeology curriculum draws on faculty from a wide range of university departments and schools. To complete the requirements for the major or minor, students must take courses from the offerings of the program and from the listings of other university departments. The Archaeology Center and its undergraduate program is one of the few places at Stanford where the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences are all fully incorporated. All three are integral to the identity and functioning of archaeology as its own discipline.

Learning Outcomes

The learning goals of the archaeology program thus reflect the discipline’s interdisciplinary nature and history, which is distinct from its allied disciplines in anthropology and classics. These include developing:

1. critical thinking skills in relation to diverse human societies and histories
2. an understanding of the history of thought and theoretical foundations of archaeology; 
3. familiarity with the different kinds of methods and evidence that archaeologists use to make arguments about the past; 
4. specialized knowledge of the archaeology of a particular topic or region; 
5. the ability to clearly and persuasively communicate ideas about archaeology to multiple audiences and communities; 
6. an appreciation of the ways in which archaeological practice, methods, and knowledge can contribute to addressing contemporary social issues and problems