Retired anthropology professor Rob Tolley and his wife Nancy have long been dedicated to IU East, creating many opportunities for students in the decades he spent teaching. His field trips to Utah to give firsthand experience in surface surveying and classes in prehistory and Southwestern literature are still fondly remembered.
But they have been active in supporting IU East since his retirement, as well, and are donating $50,000 to help fund an archaeological methodology lab. To be located in the woods east of campus, it will allow students the hands-on opportunity to perform their own digs. The artifacts will be simulated – pig skeletons, burned and buried structures, and ceramics crafted by IU East art students – but the experience is real, as students will learn appropriate methodology for excavation, site exploration, artifact analysis, and even forensics. It will be a unique and exciting resource.
As the lab demonstrates, anthropology is a subject that benefits from tactile, hands-on experience. But like any academic discipline, it wouldn’t be complete without contemplation, analysis, study, and research. And the library can help you “dig up” great resources for scholarship in anthropology.
Some of the biggest are the Wiley Online Library, which offers dozens of journals and other sources on topics ranging from linguistics to religion; and JSTOR, which has a slightly smaller selection of journals but a much deeper historical perspective, with plenty of titles running back to the 19th century. Both collections are also good in related disciplines, such as ethnology, archaeology, folklore, and material culture and both offer intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces.
And there’s plenty more. Ethnographic Video Online has over 1,300 hours of streaming video, including ethnographic films (both traditional ethnographic methodologies as well as indigenous-made films), documentaries, some feature films, and previously unpublished fieldwork, all with searchable transcripts. Daily Life through History’s “Life in the Ancient World, 10,000 BCE – 500 CE” section covers cultures from aboriginal Australia to the Indus Valley civilizations. And Ebrary’s anthropology section has over 1600 books which cover topics from rock art to superstition. There’s something to support or inspire any budding anthropologist.
Need help finding what you need? Ask us at iueref@iue.edu!