Program Structure

The Summer Institute in Materials Science and Material Culture will bring together MIT faculty and faculty from undergraduate liberal arts colleges for two weeks each summer. Each week will be organized as a specific materials science & engineering/material culture module, with morning lectures and afternoon laboratory sessions. No more than two modules will be considered during the course of any SI -- one module per week -- so that participants will gain intense exposure to the materials science, social science/humanities, materials processing, and laboratory analytical components of the subject matter.

By material culture we refer to the entire inventory of products manufactured by a society, irrespective of their utilitarian, aesthetic, or symbolic purpose. The SI will concentrate on the materials processing technologies that transform natural and synthetic materials into cultural objects. Because our own research has focused heavily on the manufactures of ancient and pre-industrial societies, the discipline of archaeology has become a vehicle and context for integrating materials science and engineering fully into our study of the material world of the past. The Summer Institutes will build upon methods and insights developed through materials-archaeological investigations to consider also the production of material culture by contemporary societies.