For Anthropology Majors
Anthropology Club
Anthropology majors (and other students who are interested in anthropology) are invited to participate in the meetings and other activities of the Anthropology Club. Currently, Alan Wheeler is the faculty sponsor for the club. Contact him at awheeler@leeuniversity.edu for more information about times and places for meetings and other events.
Graduate School Information
(Once you identify grad schools you are interested in, take the time to explore the website for that particular school. Familiarize yourself with the program, faculty, opportunities for scholarships and fellowships, and with the cost–which includes what it costs to live in the area where the school is located.)
Professional Organizations
American Anthropological Association (AAA)
Links to various sections/societies in AAA
Southern Anthropological Society (SAS)
Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC)
Society for Linguistic Anthropology (SLA)
American Research Center in Egypt
American Center of Oriental Research
Students should join professional organizations early in their education for a variety of reasons. Networking, and getting up to date information in the discipline are two important ones. There are many more professional organizations than those listed here. These are just ones I am familiar with, some of which I am, or have been, a member.
FISHNET
FISHNET is a listserv discussion group for Christian anthropologists. If you subscribe (it is free) you will receive e-mails about various issues and items discussed by members of the listserv. It is also a good resource if you have relevant questions. Unsubscribing is easy, if you decide to no longer be a part of the listserv. Directions and links for unsubscribing are in every e-mail.
If you wish to subscribe, go to the following site: https://lists.bethel.edu/mailman/listinfo/fishnet
Books Every Anthropology Major Should Read
These are books that I think would help prepare undergraduates for grad school by increasing their knowledge both in depth and in breadth. This list is by no means exhaustive. This list is just a place to begin. In addition, every anthropology student should pursue her/his own reading plan according to the area of personal professional interest, which should include reading the professional journals of the discipline. You should always make an effort to pay attention to when particular works were written so as to appreciate the evolution of concepts and theory in anthropology.
Cultural Anthropology has more books listed because I believe that it informs and is fundamental to the other 3 areas.
Cultural Anthropology
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict
Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict
Race, Language, and Culture by Franz Boas
Primitive Art by Franz Boas
Yanomamö: The Fierce People by Napoleon Chagnon
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo by Mary Douglas
Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory by Mary Douglas
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Emile Durkheim
Primitive Classification by Emile Durkheim/Marcel Mauss
Nuer Religion by E.E. Evans-Pritchard
Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande by E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault
The Golden Bough by James Frazer
The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz
The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfall by Michael J. Harner
Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures by Marvin Harris
Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture by Marvin Harris
Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture by Marvin Harris
Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture by Marvin Harris
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
The Dobe Ju/’Hoansi by Richard B. Lee
Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss
The Savage Mind by Claude Lévi-Straus
Structural Anthropology by Claude Lévi-Straus
The Raw and the Cooked by Claude Lévi-Straus
The Elementary Structures of Kinship by Claude Lévi-Straus
Totemism by Claude Lévi-Straus
Primitive Mentality by Lucien Levy-Bruhl.
Political Anthropology by Ted Lewellen
Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski
Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays by Bronislaw Malinowski
The Gift by Marcel Mauss
Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family by Lewis Henry Morgan
Ancient Society by Lewis Henry Morgan
Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture by Sherry B. Ortner
Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject by Sherry B. Ortner
The Andaman Islanders by A. R. Radicliffe-Brown
Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
Orientalism by Edward Said
Power, Politics, and Culture by Edward Said
The Harmless People by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
The Mountain People by Colin M. Turnbull
The Forest People by Colin M. Turnbull
Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation by Colin M. Turnbull
Archaeology
Note: Archaeology is very region specific, perhaps more so than any other field of anthropology, so students interested in archaeology must read deeply in the regional area of interest in both books and journals.
Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process by Dean E. Arnold
Archaeology: Theory, Methods, and Practice by Paul Bahn and Colin Renfrew
Archaeological Survey by E. B. Banning
Archaeology by Design (Vol. 1, Archaeologist’s Toolkit) by Stephen L. Black
Excavation (Vol. 5, Archaeologist’s Toolkit) by David L. Carmichael
Gods, Graves, and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology by C. W. Ceram
Archaeological Survey (Vol. 2 Archaeologist’s Toolkit) by James M. Collins
Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology by James Conolly and Mark Lake
Artifacts (Vol. 4, Archaeologist’s Toolkit) by Charles Robin Ewin
Archaeological Surveying and Mapping: Recording and Depicting the Landscape by Phil Howard
Processual Archaeology: Exploring Analytical Strategies, Frames of Reference, and Culture Process by Amber Johnson
Archaeology in the Holy Land by Kathleen Kenyon
Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton by Clark Spencer Larson
Lithic Analysis by George H. Odell
The Pyramids and Temples of Giza by William Matthew Flinders Petrie
Stylistic Variations in Prehistoric Ceramics: Design Analysis in the American Southwest by Stephen Plog
Curating Archaeological Collections (Vol. 6, Archaeologist’s Toolkit) by Lynne P. Sullivan and S. Terry Childs
Remote Sensing in Archaeology by James Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz
Archaeological Survey Manual by Gregory G. White and Thomas F. King
Reader in Archaeological Theory: Post-Processual and Cognitive Approaches by David Whitley
Presenting the Past (Vol. 7, Archaeologist’s Toolkit) by Larry J. Zimmerman
Biological Anthropology
Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual by William M. Bass
Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab and Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales by William Bass and Jon Jefferson
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen J. Gould
Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, People, and Disease by Mark A. Jobling, Matthew Hurles, and Chris Tyler-Smith
Lucy: The Beginning of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey
Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins by Donald Johanson and Kate Wong
Forensic Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Practice by Debra Komar and Jane Buikstra
The Origin of Humankind by Richard Leakey
People of the Lake: Mankind and Its Beginnings by Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin
Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropology by William R. Maples
Human Population Genetics by Russell M. Reid
The Human Bone Manual by Tim D. White and Pieter Arend Folkens
Human Osteology by Tim D. White
Linguistic Anthropology
Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax by Noam Chomsky
Language and Mind by Noam Chomsky
Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience by Erving Goffman
Directions in Sociolinghistics: The Ethnography of Communication by John Gumperz and Dell Hymes
Foundations in Sociolinguistcs: An Ethnographic Approach by Dell Hymes
The Prison-House of Language by Fredric Jameson
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Lectures on Conversation by Harvey Sacks
Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure
Speech Acts by John Searle
Language Typology and Syntactic Description by Timothy Shopen (2 volumes)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophical Investigation by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Useful Reference Books
The Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by James Birx
21st Century Thought in Anthropology, edited by James Birx