Graduate Courses

Many CMRAE courses are designed and taught by teams of faculty, often from several institutions. Graduate subjects are based on the specialties of the faculty and the needs of graduate students.

Some two-semester courses that have been offered recently include

AY 23-24Materials in Ancient Societies: Metals
Prof. Allanore (MIT), Dr. Meanwell (MIT)

These courses were taught in the CMRAE Graduate Laboratory located at MIT. Others, such as Remote Sensing and Archaeology and Geographic Information Systems and Archaeology, are taught at various consortium universities.

The courses evolve as the disciplines change and as new faculty enter the consortium. Biological Materials, for example, originally a one-semester course, has been offered more recently as separate subjects in palaeoethnobotany, zooarchaeology, and stable isotope analysis of bone. This provided a three-semester sequence in the analysis of organic materials.

Our intensive seminar-laboratory courses have an enrollment limit of 15 students, meet 3 hours each week for lecture-seminar, 4-5 hours each week for class laboratory instruction, and an additional 3-4 hours weekly for individual, supervised laboratory work. The faculty expects that many students who complete a two-semester graduate subject will be able to apply their experience to the design of a Ph.D. research project at their home institution. Graduate students who may not have access to laboratory facilities or specialized supervision they require to pursue their research may arrange to carry out their laboratory work in the CMRAE Graduate Laboratory at MIT.