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ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology is concerned with how humans and human societies evolve, with the differences and similarities among human cultures, and with the cultural and biological basis for human behavior. Anthropology integrates a wide range of perspectives on human behavior, culture, and society. Students become familiar with the basic concerns of four sub-groups of anthropology:

• Archaeology offers courses covering many geographic regions (Latin America, North America, China, and India), techniques of analysis, and issues in prehistory. Museum collections, internships in cultural resource management, and a summer field school provide opportunities for student involvement in archaeological work.
• Physical anthropology offers classes on evolutionary theory, sociobiology, human genetics, osteoarchaeology, and human and nonhuman primate evolution, anatomy, and morphology.
• Cultural anthropology offers a wide variety of courses on cultural areas including the Pacific, Latin America, China, Japan and South Asia, Eastern Europe, and the United States. Classes provide cross-cultural studies of topics such as medical anthropology, food, social and political organization, gender roles, kinship, ethnicity, folklore, and religion.
• Anthropological linguistics offers courses on the nature of languages around the world, focusing on the relationship of language to other aspects of culture and society. Among the courses offered are Gypsy language and culture and writing systems of ancient Mesoamerica.

For more information on the major and the Department of Anthropology, see http://www.pitt.edu/~pittanth/.

Major Requirements

The anthropology major requires the following:

• A total of 30 credits including the following required core courses:
  
  
  ANTH 0780 (Cultural Anthropology)
  ANTH 0680 (Physical Anthropology)
  ANTH 0582 (Archaeology)

  The core courses satisfy prerequisites for most upper-level courses and are generally taken during the freshman and sophomore years.

  ANTH 1750 or one of the other designated undergraduate seminars.
  
  

  An additional 18 credits in any anthropology courses will complete the major. A student may choose to concentrate in one of the four sub-groups listed above. One of the courses must be a writing (W) course offered within the department. Linguistics and quantitative analysis courses, though not required for the major, are highly recommended.

The requirements of the program make it possible to pursue a double major in many disciplines such as geology, history, or psychology. Students who declare anthropology as a second major should consult with the anthropology advisor as soon as possible to ensure fulfillment of anthropology requirements.

Students with an overall QPA of 3.25 or above and a QPA in anthropology courses of 3.50 or above will be graduated from the department with honors, pending the submission and acceptance of a paper representing substantial student research. The honors paper may be an expanded version of a paper from a course, or may result from independent research. The successful completion of a linguistics course is recommended.

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