SUNY Potsdam

Both anthropology and archaeology are for anyone interested in working with people in all of their cultural diversity, solving social problems, unearthing historical mysteries, teaching social sciences, examining human behavior and biology from an evolutionary point of view.

Opportunities to Get Experience:

• The department magazine Collegiate Anthropologist, published twice a year.

• Laboratory and research assistantships in archaeology and biological anthropology.

• Teaching assistantships.

• Independent research with faculty mentors.

• Preparing museum exhibits.

• Planning the Northeastern Anthropological Association annual meeting.

• Internships in North Country schools, businesses, government offices and social work agencies.

• Summer expeditions to archaeological dig sites in the North Country and elsewhere.  Recently, students have excavated at the site of slave cabins in Virginia, and cemeteries in Poland.

• The Anthropology Club, which hosts speakers, shows films, takes field trips and provides social opportunities.

We welcome two new faculty members to the Department of Anthropology this fall.

Dr. Timothy Messner received his Ph.D. from Temple University in 2008. He joins us as a prehistoric archaeologist specializing in the archaeology of northeastern North America with an emphasis on the interconnections between people and ecosystems on local, regional and global scales. He utilizes archaeological, paleoethnobotanical, ethnohistoric and geological modes of inquiry to reconstruct aspects of prehistoric people’s relationships with their environments and how they have transformed particular environmental contexts. Over the last several years he has been teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He also has the honor of holding a Research Associate status at the Smithsonian Institute’s Department of Anthropology and the Center for American Archaeology.

Dr. Jennifer Campbell earned her Ph.D. in July of 2011 from the Anthropology Department at the University of Toronto. She is a full member of the Archaeology Centre at the University of Toronto and Trent University's Archaeology Research Centre as well as the co-director of the Caravanserai Networks Project.  Her ongoing research examines how and why people occupy specific places through time and how “we” present these places as heritage sites and thus shape the direction of historical engagement. Her work explores the roles of social media, digital media, and emergent communication and recording technologies in forming interpretations of the past. She has conducted field research in the Canadian subarctic, southern Ontario, eastern Canada, and most recently with her ongoing project in northern South Asia.