« Anthropoloy Subfield Test | Main | Finally, a purpose for archaeology »
Monday, October 03, 2005
How to write an archaeology paper
The About.com archaeology page has a mini-course in how to write an archaeology research paper. Nothing new or revolutionary, but it's good to refresh your memory on the basics every once in a while, even if your career is writing archaeology papers.
I have three papers to write over the next few months, all of which constitute the bulk of my grades for this semester. In actuality, I will be killing four birds with one stone. I plan on using the same research topic/thesis for each paper and many of the same resources, expanding and rearranging as needed depending on the course. The fourth bird is that these papers will sort of be a preliminary survey of what I want to do for my research next summer and my thesis next year. Since my Belize experience last summer I have become very interested in Ancient Maya agriculture, subsistence, and land use. I spoke with my professor today and we narrowed that down to Maya relationships with the land, which really encompasses what I just mentioned and potentially an ideological/cosmological dimension. Essentially, in my papers I want to revisit one of Patricia McAnany’s discussions in her book Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society. I was pleased to learn that her chapter on land relationships has been widely praised but no one has yet done a critical evaluation of her basic arguments (according to my prof) or applied them to other regions. Once I get a better handle on what those arguments are (I just started the book today) I’ll relate them here, as well as post about the progress of the papers in general.
In Honduras, where I’ll most likely be carrying out my research next summer (and where my professor co-directs a field school) there are some uninvestigated field houses associated with Prehistoric agricultural areas that raise some interesting questions, some of which I plan on visiting this semester in my papers. Field houses were and still are essentially basic structures where farmers would keep their tools, rest, and maybe stay for extended periods of time if the plot of land with which the field house is associated is located some distance from the primary residence. There are so many dimensions to Ancient Maya land use that I still have quite a bit of narrowing down to do.
If any of you reading has an advanced degree, what was the process like for you in zeroing in on a research topic and commiting to it?
Posted by Will at October 3, 2005 11:27 PM in Graduate School
Comments
I could give you tips on a bad way to get a research topic. So far what you're doing sounds sensible. The key thing is that you need to engage the interest of your supervisor. In an ideal world a supervisor will be keen to see the results of your research.
The only caveat I have is that it's good to poke your head up and look at other perspectives. On my course I sat in on South American archaeology, while my nominated area was Later Prehistoric Europe. The PhD I'm working on is essentially a plan I had for a survey of Peru transposed onto ancient Sicily.
Posted by: Alun at October 4, 2005 09:06 AM