ARCHY 369 B: Special Problems in Archaeology

This syllabus and the pages it links to are living documents. Make sure come back here throughout the quarter to see if there have been any changes. 

"HieroglyphVariant" by Paulina F. Przystupa from Archaeology and Comics, with a Case Study Examining the Representation of Black Archaeologists published on Epoiesen in 2024. Original image is adapted from a piece held by the New York Public Library.

Course description and introduction

In the Spring 2026 version of ARCHY 369 B, we'll be exploring the relationship between archaeology and popular culture. This includes exploring how different pop culture mediums (comics, film, video games, podcasts, and more) portray archaeology and considering how we can archaeology as a practice and theoretical perspective helps us understand popular culture in the present. We'll do this by considering pop culture through different media and by considering where information about material culture and belongings comes from by evaluating how access to knowledge influences people's ability to portray the past in their creations.

The course will focus on reading, watching, listening to, or more broadly consuming different works to understand different archaeological sites, periods, theories, and cultures and then exploring their related counterparts in pop culture. The course will center around a research project where students will explore an archaeological topic of their choosing with the goal of creating a public-facing product about that topic and considering how information access changes interpretation. Students should have some familiarity with archaeology and it's vocabulary as we won't necessarily have a lot of time to provide introductions to foundational archaeological concepts. Student without this are welcome to join but be prepared to do some work on their own to get themselves caught up. 

By completing the work and engaging with the material from this course you will:

• Explore and better understand the relationship between archaeology and pop culture
• Gain a deeper knowledge of the way that archaeology is portrayed in popular media
• Cultivate your evaluation skills to consider how access to archaeological information impacts our ability to create archaeological interpretations
• Discuss and consider the archaeological practice as it intersects with the public
• Improve your analysis skills in a way that helps frame archaeological research for different audiences
• Practice developing and executing a public-facing archaeology related product

The course will have four main components with different weights: in-class participation, out-of-class participation, a midterm workshopping session with accompanying deliverables, and a final project with periodic deliverables throughout the quarter.

Course Organization

We'll be exploring a wide variety of approaches to archaeology in and of pop culture in this class. As a class, we'll create knowledge by consuming, critiquing, and creating lectures, activities, videos, readings, discussions, and group projects that consider the existing data, information, and knowledge created by archaeology and how this is portrayed or reflected in pop culture. My goal for this course is for it to be fun, informative, and a place to start cultivating your knowledge of archaeology, science communication, research for your own enjoyment as well as for your future career, whatever it might be.

If that career rests outside of archaeology, my goal is that you focus on the critical information and data literacy necessary to create knowledge about the past and the communication skills you’ll build by writing responses in class, creating videos, cultivating verbally through discussion, and presenting your projects. For better or worse, everyone needs to know how to vet data and information for their accuracy and precision, and then communicate those conclusions to others in a variety of formats. Hopefully in this class, we’ll do so in a fun and pop-culture centered way.

Course Requirements, assignments and grading

Workload

Following from the guidelines shared on https://www.washington.edu/students/reg/credit.html “1 credit represents a total student time commitment of 3 hours each week in a 10-week quarter”. This means that for a five-credit class (such as this) you should be spending, at minimum, fifteen (15) hours working on this course. This includes the four hours we spend in class together, leaving eleven (11) hours of work for you to do outside of class. That work includes meeting with myself to ask questions, reading the assigned materials, general studying, doing out-of-class participation assignments, working on your individual research projects, and any other graded activities assigned through this course. Keep this in mind as you plan your quarter.

Out-of-class participation (20%)

20% of your grade depends on participation in assignments and/or activities that you will complete outside of class. This includes assignments related to the readings or materials to prepare for each class period. See the course calendar for a tentative list of the topics we'll be covering in this course and the Background on Readings page for more information. All readings or other consumable materials should be completed by the class period they appear next to. In addition, there will be non-readings related assignments that you’ll need to complete. There are fewer of these, but they’re a fun way to show you're doing the work for this class and can help me see how your thinking about the material and/or your research. 

In-class participation (30%)

This class is about exploring the archaeology of pop culture and exploring how archaeology is portrayed in popular culture. To explore this well, it's important that you participate in the class activities and discussions so you can engage with the material in a deeper way. Most of these activities will be completed in class as a group but you can also earn participation by asking questions, volunteering to explain topics, assisting your fellow students, responding to the in-class lives quizzes or surveys, and other acts that show you're engaging with the material during class. Active listening and taking notes are as important for retaining information as talking. Keep in mind that every class period is a chance to earn participation points. However, it also means that if you miss a class or two this should not impact your grade as long as you participate when you are in class. If you miss (or expect to miss) a significant number of classes due to non-Disability-Related absences and would like to discuss alternatives for earning in-class participation please email me with your ideas for doing so by the midterm workshop session.

Midterm workshop (20%)

In lieu of a midterm paper or traditional test, we will hold a midterm workshop session to explore and develop the ideas for the research project. During week five, I will assign each of you a partner and you'll have the majority of the class period during the second class of that week to workshop your archaeological research project. Besides attending the workshop session and spending that time focusing on developing your ideas, you'll submit a summary of your work so far for the project, a personal reflection of how you're doing in the class, and a response to the project ideas of your partner. The use of AI (including but not limited to Grammerly, Gemini, Copilot, etc) for these submissions is not permitted in any capacity. 

Final project (30%)

Rather than a comprehensive final paper or test, you will complete a final research project that synthesizes archaeological information from diverse sources to create an informative and accurate creative product--such as a game, comic, video, podcast, fictive story, story-playlist, story map, etc.--that shares or teaches that topic to an audience of your choosing. This will include communicating the key points of the topic at an appropriate level and in a way that explores how access to information might change one's understanding of the topic. I'll explain this in more detail on the Final Project page when it's available.  

Grading

I prefer to use a variety of alternate assessment models to encourage mastery and learning. That means while this course is graded and there will be points, in general I want to see you do the work more than anything else. That means focus on skills building, engaging with the material, and learning from failure because accuracy, precision, and getting things right come from doing the work and putting the hours in. 

Submissions

You will be submitting a combination of work in person and online. For online submissions, make sure to check that your online-accessible device and the website have the same time zone settings, so you’re submission isn’t late. If you are having problems with the online submission platform, please e-mail me before the start of class with your problem and bring a printed version of the assignment to class that day. If the assignment is an annotation, you can bring in a highlighted and noted printed copy in lieu of a digital version.

Missed or late submissions

Late work will have a maximum score of 90% and completely missed submissions will be given a zero. Assignments missed during the quarter must be submitted by 11:59pm on the last regular day of class or they will be considered missed assignments. 

Grade Discussion

Sometimes we make mistakes in grading, however, you must wait at least 24 hours from the end of class to discuss grading on assignments, activities, and projects. You must read all comments on the work before discussing the grade, e-mail grade questions and comments giving specific examples for any problems with the grade, then set up an appointment to discuss the grade in-person with either myself.

Office Hours
If you have questions about the course, want extra help with a homework assignment, or have other questions not covered in class please stop office hours or make an appointment. Office hours are a great chance to get one-on-one help with the class.

Grading break down 

University Policies as they apply to this course

To align with the integrity we expect from you, I want to acknowledge that I adapted or used wholesale some of the following sections from suggested wording provided by the University in 2025 or by other faculty at UW. It's technically copyright the University according to the pages it's from, or those faculty, and I provide this statement instead of giant quotations, except when entire paragraphs are adapted. 

Academic Integrity

I expect that the academic work you do and submit for credit in this class is the result of your own personal thoughts, research, and self-expression unless something is assigned to be a collaborative product. When using the ideas of someone else you must cite those people. The University takes academic integrity very seriously and wants it's students to take it seriously too. Behaving with integrity is part of our responsibility to our shared learning community. If you’re uncertain about if something is academic misconduct, ask because if you're unsure, odds are someone else is too and I'd rather discuss it with you and the class rather than give you a zero. 

If you're not sure what academic misconduct is, here are some examples. Academic misconduct may include but is not limited to:

• Cheating (such as but not limited to working collaboratively on materials that should be individual submissions, sharing answers, and previewing quizzes)
• Plagiarism (such as but not limited to representing the work of others as your own without giving appropriate credit to the original author(s)). We'll talk a lot about citation and attribution so you can avoid accidental plagiarism but one way to think about it is, if you didn't create it, quote it, cite it, and link to it where possible and state when you adapted something from something else and give credit for the original. Learn even more about plagiarism at: https://soc.washington.edu/information-academic-honestyplagiarism 
• Unauthorized collaboration (working with each other on assignments that are not meant to be collaborative)

There is even more defining student misconduct from the Washington State Legislature here (if anyone is pre-law check it out!) Concerns about these or other behaviors prohibited by the Student Conduct Code will be referred for investigation and adjudication. Students found to have engaged in academic misconduct may receive a zero on the assignment (or other possible outcome) and repeat offenses will result in an E grade (0) for the course.

Technology and academic misconduct 

There are a lot of cool technologies out there that you can use to get an well-formed answers that look nice. Previously, those were paragraphs or answers you had to copy and paste into assignments from blogs or Wikipedia and could easily be reverse-searched to identify plagiarized work. AI (via tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini/Bard, Copilot, Grok, etc.) now replace this in many ways. However, the underlying misconduct is the same, wanting credit for something not worked for.

Following from the Student Code of Conduct set by the Washington State Legislature, the use of AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Grammerly, Claude, etc.) in this course, such as to create responses, edit your writing to improve or alter spelling and grammar, or generate images, video, or audio, and then submitting them as your own work in assignments and activities, responses, or annotations for credit falls under the 'use of unauthorized assistance' and is an act of academic misconduct. See more details, examples, and explanation in the Expanded AI Statement page. 

Conduct

In addition to the work you submit, I expect you to treat each other, visiting speakers, any people we visit outside the classroom, and this instructing team with respect. We're here to learn and doing so requires openness, a willingness to approach hard topics in an authentic way, and to engage with conflict through considerate and respectful engagement. All academic pursuits have some degree of subjectivity, bias, or room for discussion. However,  we should approach those pursuits with the knowledge that we all have different experiences that influence our understanding but that we're gathered here because we share a curiosity and interest in the material.

Therefore, actions that disrupt the class's ability to learn or any educator's ability to each are unacceptable. Furthermore, "the University of Washington Student Conduct Code (WAC 478-121) defines prohibited academic and behavioral conduct and describes how the University holds students accountable as they pursue their academic goals. Allegations of misconduct by students may be referred to the appropriate campus office for investigation and resolution. More information can be found online at https://www.washington.edu/studentconduct/"

Disability Access and Accommodations:

I care about your experience in this class and adhere to the accommodation policies of the University, such as by making my slides available online when I use them, avoiding the use of timed tests in this course, and providing agreed upon alternatives for disability related absences when discussed by the end of week 2. In addition, Disability Resources for Students provides this statement that I follow in my classroom:

"It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law. If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please activate your accommodations via myDRS so we can discuss how they will be implemented in this course.

If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations (conditions include but not limited to; mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts), contact DRS directly to set up an Access Plan. DRS facilitates the interactive process that establishes reasonable accommodations. Contact DRS at disability.uw.edu."

Religious Accommodation

“Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staff-faculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).”

Discrimination, harassment, and sexual misconduct

"University of Washington policy, in concert with federal and state laws, provides the right to participate in University programs and activities free from sexual misconduct or discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics, including but not limited to disability, race, sex and others. Sexual misconduct includes, but is not limited to, sexual assault, relationship violence, sexual harassment, and stalking.

Students who believe they have experienced civil rights discrimination, harassment, or sexual misconduct are encouraged to contact a Civil Rights Compliance Office Case Manager by making a Civil Rights & Title IX Report. Case managers can provide guidance on available Supportive Measures and Resolution Options.

You can also access these resources directly:

• Know Your Rights & Resources guide provides information for any member of the UW community who has experienced sexual misconduct.
• Confidential Advocates offer confidential support and advocacy for UW students and employees impacted by sexual assault, relationship violence, or stalking.
• Pregnancy & Related Conditions provides information on support and reasonable modifications related to attending class or participating in educational activities if you are pregnant, have experienced a miscarriage or an abortion, are recovering from giving birth, are lactating, or have a related medical condition.

It’s also important to be aware that most employees who become aware of discrimination, harassment, or sexual misconduct involving students are required to share information with the Civil Rights Compliance Office. They may withhold the impacted student’s name if requested.

uw.edu/civilrights

Version: July 2025"

Safety

Related to the above but also for other issues you can, "call SafeCampus at 206-685-7233 anytime – no matter where you work or study – to anonymously discuss safety and well-being concerns for yourself or others. SafeCampus’s team of caring professionals will provide individualized support, while discussing short- and long-term solutions and connecting you with additional resources when requested." Learn more about safe Campus at http://www.washington.edu/safecampus/