Environmental Anthropology

Environmental Anthropology track focuses on the dynamic relationship between the human organism and its natural and social environment. Coursework and research opportunities associated with the track provides students with a fundamental theoretical and methodological foundation for investigating processes that shape temporal and spatial distributions and interactions of people, land, and the resources they utilize. The track provides a cross-disciplinary, theoretical approach to the ecology of human-environmental dynamics, including behavioral ecology, political ecology, evolutionary ecology, zooarchaeology and ethnoarchaeology, the human dimensions of global change, demography, biological anthropology, and human population ecology. Faculty focus on how processes of evolutionary change, both biological and cultural, create variability and plasticity in human behavior, bodies, culture and social systems and on the ways that such variability interacts dynamically with biotic and social environments at various spatial scales.

Required courses

Required: ANTHRO 90B: Theory of Culture and Society Anthropology
Required: ANTRHO 91: Methods and Evidence in Anthropology

Example of Courses within the Environmental Anthropology Emphasis (20 units required)

  • Anthro 91A: Archaeological Methods

  • Anthro 103: The Archaeology of Climate

  • Anthro 103B: History of Archaeological Thought

  • Anthro 104A: Archaeological approaches to Landscapes: How people and things make Places and Spaces

  • Anthro 124B: Environmental Justice and Anthropology

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