Assignments

While all assignments will be graded on a point scale (ie. 15/20) and the running tally of the semester grade on D2L will be displayed as percent, final grades will be given on a 4.0 scale. The final grade will be calculated using the following scale:

  • 90 – 100 = 4.0
  • 85 – 89.99 = 3.5
  • 80 – 84.99 = 3.0
  • 75 – 79.99 = 2.5
  • 70 – 74.99 – 2.0
  • 65 – 69.99 = 1.5
  • 60 – 64.99 = 1.0
  • <60 = 0

Your final grade will be based on the following criteria:

Blog Entries/Responses (15%) – Throughout the semester, students will be required to post a series of posts to the course blog. The subject of each weekly Blog Post should be a thoughtful reflection/discussion of that week’s readings.  This is a reading reflection, not a lecture reflection, please remember this.

Each Blog Post must be at least 400 words in length (though students are welcome to write more than that if they want).   In addition to the posts, students are expected to respond to at least one post made by their fellow students.  The responses must be at least 250 words.  Posts are (usually) due by 5pm on Thursday, and the responses are (usually) due by 5pm on Sunday. Students must complete both that week’s entry and response in order to get credit for the assignment.  If students meet all of the requirements for the assignment (due date, length requirement, entry + response), they will receive full credit.  If students don’t meet all of the requirements, they will not receive credit at all.  No partial credit is given for partially complete Blog Posts/Responses.

Research Paper (30%): Students are expected to write a critical research paper (on a subject of their choice – within the context of the class topic). The research paper must be a minimum 3000 words. The topic of the research article is completely up to the student (but must be within the context of the class subject).  Some general thoughts on the Research Paper:

  • Meeting the minimum word count is a requirement of the assignment.  If students don’t meet that minimum word count, they will be docked significantly.
  • Students should use the Society for American Archaeology style guide (details of which can be found here)
  • Students who do not conform their proposed topic will be docked significantly.
  • The topic of your paper should exhibit “bigger” thinking – you need to exhibit some intellectual synthesis.
  • This is an archaeology research paper, not a history research paper
  • This is a research paper.  As such, it requires a strong intellectual focus supported by research and sources.
  • Scholarly sources are required (online or physical). If you are confused as to what constitutes a “Scholarly source,” ask.
  • Online encyclopedia sites like Wikipedia or Encyclopedia.com (etc, etc, etc) are not acceptable scholarly sources, nor are sites like touregypt.net.
  • Paper should be submitted electronically via email as a PDF (Word or other formats will not be accepted) by the due date

Research Paper Proposal (10%) – Students are required to write a minimum 500 word proposal for their final research paper.  The proposal is to be posted on the course blog (as Blog #3).  The proposal is intended to introduce (and briefly explore) your topic, discuss why your topic is meaningful and important, introduce your primary intellectual focus, and discuss the sources you are going to use.  Student should also include at least 3 specific scholarly sources – as an example of available research material.   Feedback will be provided on the proposed topic, and revisions might be required in order to get credit. Wikipedia (and similar sites like dictionary.com, etc.) are not acceptable sources. Sites such as touregypt.net are not scholarly in nature, and are not acceptable. If you not sure about the quality of a source, ask!

Final Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology (25%).  As with the previous year this class was taught, we’re going to try something a little out of the box.  Together, we are going to build the Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology (surprisingly, such thing didn’t exist before we started building it in this class).  This is a big, crazy experiment. Students will learn some digital skills during the process, such as working with HTML, digital mapping skills, version control, etc (things that they can easily apply in other settings).  They’ll also dive deeply into researching a specific archaeological site (of their choosing).

Students will be asked to choose a specific archaeological site (from the list below – or they can suggest another one if they would like).  That site will be plotted on an online, interactive map. This will link to a thorough site report (which the student will research, design, and write).

The atlas entry must be at least 1500 words, and include (at least) the following sections:

  • Introduction
  • Introduction to location, geography, geology, setting, etc.
  • Description of the Site
  • Discussion of excavations – both past and present
  • Results and significance of excavations
  • Conclusion – importance of site & excavations, how it fits into overall Egyptian archaeology (and related to other similar sites), etc.
  • In addition, the entry must have at least 4 images.

Take a look at the project for the previous version of the class to get an idea of what we’ll be building: http://matrix-msu.github.io/daea/

The atlas entry must be well research using scholarly sources.  In terms of sources, I far prefer archaeological and egyptological sources (articles, books, book chapters, websites, etc written by actual archaeologists and egyptologists) as opposed to sources that write about the site from a generally uninformed or casual perspective.  I don’t care whether the sources are digital or physical.  Sources such as wikipedia, about.com, dictionary.com, touregypt.net, etc, etc, etc are not not acceptable (wikipedia is always a good place to start, but it isn’t an acceptable authoritative source).  I would suggest looking to Google books as they seem to have digitized a lot of the early (early 20th century) Egyptian archaeological sources. You can also dive into Hathi Trust and the Internet Archive for sources

Suggested Archaeological Sites:

  • KV20 – Elizabeth Sauter 
  • Temple of Amun at Siwa – Casey Carter
  • Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III at Luxor (Kom el- Hettan) – Chris Reyes
  • Bubastis – Mary Rooney 
  • Tell Edfu – Morgan Otero
  • Tell el-Fara’in/Buto
  • Temple of Hathor, Dendera – Kayla Leer
  • el-Adaïma – Amber Drury
  • Dashur – Bella Rosi
  • Kom Abu Bello – Caroline Nguyen
  • Kom el-Hisn
  • el-Lisht
  • Marea
  • Medamud
  • Hierakonpolis – Caitlyn Danforth
  • Abu Roash
  • Antinopolis – Erin Kurth
  • Berenike Panchrysos
  • Bir Umm Fawakhir
  • Dakhla Oasis, Ismant el-Kharab
  • Deir el-Ballas –Juli Ginn
  • Dorginarti
  • Gebel Barkal
  • Gebel el-Silsila – Paige Brewbaker
  • Gebelein/Naga el-Gherira
  • Medinet Gurob
  • Hu/Hiw (Diospolis Parva)
  • Kafr Tarkhan (Kafr Ammar)
  • Karnak, precinct of Mut – Emily Schmidt
  • Karnak, precinct of Montu
  • Kerma – Desirée Quinn
  • Kom el-Hisn – Roman Trotskyy
  • Marea
  • Marsa Matruh
  • Mazghuna
  • Naga ed-Deir – Lindsay Guare
  • Abydos, Temple of Seti I –Tyreeze Weddington
  • KV7 – Annette McDowell
  • El Kab – Emma Verlinden
  • Amarna- Liz Christensen
  • Mut el-Kharab (Dakhla Oasis)
  • Elephantine – Mercedes Reyna 
  • Heracleopolis
  • Kom Ombo – Peter Mercier
  • el-Kurru
  • Medinet Habu – Alaynna Dressler
  • Deir el-Medina – Hannah Kayser
  • Kulubnarti 
  • Mis Island – Elena Watson
  • Semna South – Sheena Washington
  • Heit el-Ghurab – Brianna Jones
  • Naucratis – Haley Broda
  • Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el- Bahri – Hannah Tresedder

You must choose your site no later than 9/28 (by 5pm).  Email Ethan with your selection.  Those students who don’t make their choice by the due date will be randomly assigned a site from those remaining.

Why are we doing this?  Bunch of reasons. First, it is a way for you to get to know an archaeological site more intimately (and therefor broaden your knowledge of Egyptian archaeology in general) by doing something different than a regular research paper.  The Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology isn’t going to go away at the end of the semester.  It will stay online (and will be enhanced every time I teach this class with new sites).  The result will be a very useful resource for those interested in Egyptian archaeology. You’ll be contributing to the community of scholars interested in Egyptian archaeology. The project will also allow you to develop some interesting digital skills – things that you probably wouldn’t have learned in your average Anthropology class. But nonetheless, skills that might serve you will beyond the class (in whatever career you are planning on pursuing).  Finally, because the site will stay up indefinitely, you can point to it as something tangible (and hopefully interesting and innovative) you did in this class (and in your undergrad career in general)

Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology Milestone Assignment 1 (5%) – the DAEA Milestone 1 Assignment involves doing a series of small tasks that will start to build your project: (1) clone repository, (2) copy provided template and rename it with the name of your archaeological site (remember no spaces and all lower class), (3) add a little new content (site name, time period, and your name as author) to the template, and (4) create a pull request to add your content back into the main repository (your commit message should say something like “submitting milestone 1 assignment)   Until we’ve had our first digital skills workshop, this stuff won’t mean anything at all.  Rest assured, you’ll learn how to do these things in the first batch of digital skills workshop (and you’ll have another open lab period to get help if you need it).  The other good thing is that if you do all of these things, you will receive 100% for the assignment.

Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology Milestone Assignment 2 (5%)  – The DAEA Milestone 2 Assignment involves doing a series of small tasks that will continue to build your project: (1) add 2 or your 4 images to your archaeological site page/atlas entry, (2) add figure captions to those images, (3) do a pull request to add your content back into the main repository.  As with the first milestone assignment, this stuff really won’t mean anything to you until after your start the second digital skills workshop.  As with the first assignment, you’ll learn how to do these things in the second batch of digital skills workshop (and you’ll have another open lab period to get help if you need it).  The other good thing is that if you do all of these things, you will receive 100% for the assignment.

Class Citizenship (10%) – Discussion/interaction/participation plays an important role in this class.  Students are expected to be informed participants in all aspects of the class, contributing to the overall healthiness of the teaching/learning experience (yes, that includes attendance). This also includes your participation in the technical tutorial session (see the Schedule for the days we will be in the LEADR lab) and open lab sessions.