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 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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Applied anthropology uses knowledge gleaned through participant observation to develop projects desired by communities to mitigate local issues. Applied anthropology projects at Georgia Southern University involve language revitalization, behavioral health, sustainable seafood systems, oyster production and tourism.
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Anthropology Faculty
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Heidi AltmanAssociate Professor of Anthropology |
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Jacqueline BergerAssistant Professor of Anthropology |
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Kara Bridgman SweeneyLecturer of Anthropology |
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J. Matthew ComptonDirector, Laboratory of Archaeology and Curator, R M Bogan Archaeological Repository |
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Ryan McNuttAssociate Professor of Anthropology More Information |
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Jennifer Sweeney TookesAssociate Professor of Anthropology |
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M. Jared WoodAssociate Professor of Anthropology |
Anthropology Faculty in Other Departments
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Matthew A. WilliamsonAssociate Professor of Kinesiology |
Last updated: 2/17/2023