<p>Hey all, I am new here and I am really interested in archaeology. Between Boston University, George Washington University, and New York University, which school has the strongest program in archaeology? I am not sure which specific field of archaeology I want to pursue, so I am interested soley on the overall archaeology program. Thank you.</p>
<p>You really do need to narrow it down a little. At least to a region or general time period (e.g. neolithic near east, iron age britain). </p>
<p>A quick look at the three schools you mention:</p>
<p>BU has a huge archaeology department - most schools have pre-historic archaeology in Anthropology and bronze age forward in regional or period studies departments. It looks like a great department with a wide range of interests.</p>
<p>GWU has the more typical Archaeology as part of Anthropology structure. You'd want to look closely at their faculty for depth in the areas that most interest you. They have three professors specifically dedicated to archaeology: Mesoamerica, Paleolithic, and bronze age Med.</p>
<p>NYU appears to have archaeology entirely within Anthropology and offers a joint major with the Classics department so that would likely focus on bronze age Mediterranean forward.</p>
<p>If I truly had no idea what area I wanted to study, I'd probably go for BU simply because they have such breadth of faculty.</p>
<p>One other thing to be aware of - if you want to do archaeology as a career you're ultimately looking at getting a PhD. As you begin to focus on a specialty, be aware of the "research languages" you'll need. In addition to the native language(s) of the region and time period, you'll also want to learn the modern languages where most of the research is published. The two most common are German and French.</p>
<p>FWIW, I'm applying to grad school this season in Classical Archaeology.</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>william c, i have a few questions for you: i'm a current junior and i'll be taking latin all four years of hs and i really do love it, but instead of being a latin teacher, i know i would LOVE to be a classical archaeologist, ive just loved history forever. so my first question is: what was your major in college? and do you know of any great classics or archaology schools? ive been asking around alot, but my college counselors basically have no idea what theyre talking about because no one has ever asked about archaeology. any help?</p>
<p>dmoney06 - you have several choices for undergraduate major depending on how you want to approach Classical Archaeology.</p>
<p>The most common major is probably Classics, since you'll need both Latin and Greek anyway. You'll want to focus your other classes on the history, art history and other related fields. Once you get to college, your professors will be able to guide you. Not surprisingly, I was a Classics major.</p>
<p>Some universities actually offer a Classical Archaeology major so if that's available, that's what you want to take. Be sure to load up on the languages even if they are not required.</p>
<p>Ancient history and Art History focused on the classical world are also possibilities.</p>
<p>But your undergrad major is just a beginning - to actually do classical archaeology as a profession, you'll be applying heading off to grad school for a PhD. But that's 6 years in the future for you...</p>
<p>Schools to look at - most of the Ivies have excellent departments. I'm partial to Penn of course. Berkeley, Michigan, Cincinnati, and Chicago are all near the top of the heap for undergrad as well as graduate work. Most of the big state schools have pretty good Classics departments, but you do want to be sure that you can get at least 4 years of one language and 3 of the other. You can verify that by going to the departmental website and looking at their course offerings. Both languages should have a 1 year elementary sequence, a 1 year intermediate sequence (which you'll likely test out of for Latin) and then a "Topics" course in each language that will sometimes have the same course number each semester but will be a different author or genre. For example, "Lyric Poetry" or "Cicero's Letters to Quintus". Finally, very small liberal arts colleges often have extremely good departments and they typically have the advantage of allowing a lot of personal attention.</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>BU also has a summer program for archaeology doing digs on an island near Spain, if that helps at all.</p>