Degree in Anthropology

Major in Anthropology

The Anthropology degree program at Georgia Southern offers broad, multidisciplinary training in the four-field discipline (Cultural Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, Archaeology, Biological Anthropology), with special emphasis on practice and application of Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology. Anthropology majors work alongside our world-class faculty in diverse field settings, as well as our state-of-the-art labs and archaeological repository.

Program Requirements

In addition to a strong liberal arts base of classes, our majors are required to take 33 hours of upper-division anthropology courses, many of which have hands-on and/or research applications.

Student Learning Outcomes

Anthropology Minor

Students may also minor in Anthropology by completing 15 credit hours in Anthropology classes.

Requirements:

• ANTH 1102 Introduction to Anthropology
• 15 hrs of upper-division Anthropology courses (3000 or above)

How do I change or add a minor?

Changing or adding a minor is easy. Follow these simple directions. However, it’s best to talk with your current advisor and check DegreeWorks to see how switching/adding this minor will impact your path to graduation.

Do you have questions?

If you have any questions or if we can help you transition to a anthropology minor simply contact SAM@georgiasouthern.edu, call the Department office at 912-478-5443, or stop by our office in the Carroll Building, Room 1003.

The Anthropology Program

Anthropology is a broad and complex social science discipline that includes four distinct subfields as means for studying human beings at all times, in all places and circumstances.

• Anthropologists study the remains of past cultures through archaeology. Archaeologists recover artifacts and other data by painstakingly excavating sites of past human occupation and looking through the pieces left behind by the people who lived there.
• Anthropologists study the physical aspects of what it means to be human through biological anthropology. Biological anthropologists study skeletons, DNA, disease, non-human primates and fossil hominids to provide a complete picture of the evolutionary record and the effects of cultural changes like agriculture on the human body.
• Anthropologists study contemporary human communities through cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropologists typically spend an extended period of time living in a community and writing descriptions of their experience.
• Anthropologists study the relationships between culture and language through linguistic anthropology. Linguistic anthropologists typically spend time in communities recording language and cultural data and looking for connections between the two sets of data.

All of anthropology’s subfields can be brought out of the classroom and into the community through applied anthropology, which seeks to use the knowledge gained through academic research to solve social problems. Some domains of applied anthropology include forensic anthropology, medical anthropology, anthropology of tourism, language revitalization, and most archaeology practiced in the U.S. and its territories.

• Archaeology
• Applied Anthropology

Archaeology at Georgia Southern is regionally focused in the American Southeast, providing accessible, hands-on educational and research opportunities at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Students and faculty together explore cultural expressions and adaptations spanning the peopling of the continent to the modern era, through field, laboratory, and classroom activities.

Camp Lawton was a Confederate camp for Union POWs built in the summer of 1864 and abandoned by December. Now managed by GA DNR and the USFWS, in 2009, Georgia Southern University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology was invited to investigate the archaeology of Camp Lawton. These investigations uncovered substantial evidence showing day to day life at Camp Lawton as experienced by Confederate guards and Union POWs. Archaeology continues at Camp Lawton, which has become a time capsule, locking into the soil the stories and experiences of those who were guarded, and those who guarded them in the lonely Georgia pines as war raged ever closer.
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Field Experience and Anthropology Internship Opportunities

At Georgia Southern, Anthropology students discover the past through hands-on fieldwork and laboratory analysis, learning practical, career-focused professional skills. Recent archaeological projects include survey and testing of

• Camp Lawton (a Confederate Army military prison near Millen, Georgia)
• Prehistoric Native American encampments, villages and mound sites (along the Savannah River and its tributaries)
• Locations in the Savannah national Historic Landmark District (as part of projects with the Digging Savannah public archaeology initiative)

Anthropology majors can earn course credit working in nonprofit organizations, government agencies and other organizations, applying their anthropology training to real-world problems and settings. These experiences allow them to master applied anthropology — when anthropologists connect their research to problems or concerns identified by communities and work with communities toward a solution.

Students gain work experience in archaeological curation and artifact conservation as volunteers and paid employees in our archaeological labs and the R M Bogan Archaeological Repository. Anthropology students may also take their studies abroad.

Additionally, students can join the Georgia Southern Anthropological Society, a student organization that builds students’ peer networks and professional connections, arranges field trips to anthropological events and places of interest, helps organize and fund student attendance at anthropology conferences, sponsors guest speakers and explores how we can see anthropology in everything.

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Last updated: 9/8/2021