Experience and Experiment: Undergraduate Experimental Archaeology at Southern Utah University

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In Fall 2024 Southern Utah University, a regional, teaching focused, public university, offered its first ever undergraduate course on Experimental Archaeology. Experimental Archaeology has long been recognized as a particularly effective and impactful educational approach, at both the public and the student level (c.f. Clarkson 2015, Outram 2008, Reynolds 1972). Its active and actualistic approach is fun and engaging, while at the same time cultivating student skills in experimental design and critical analysis. This presentation presents four short case studies focused on experimental class projects, ranging from taphonomic experiments to use wear analyses to actualistic studies of traditional technologies. It also briefly describes the variety of independent projects students undertook for their final projects. In the course of my discussion, I address the challenges of offering this course with a limited budget and laboratory space and examine the measurable and intangible learning outcomes of a face to face, hands-on experiential class. I conclude the presentation by looking at how these small-scale campus experiments can contribute to broader community based educational initiatives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53996