Throughout the course of the semester you will be researching a specific topic in anthropology or archaeology. Your final project will be a thorough literature review on your topic. You will face a number of challenges along the way:
- Your biggest challenge will be to find a topic that is not to broad or not too narrow. Your basic goal is to identify all (or at least a substantial part) of the anthropological literature on your topic, so you will need work to define your topic so this is doable in a semester
- As you begin searching, you will begin to get an idea of what is out there on your topic. What you find may cause you to change or adjust your topic. That's O.K.!
- Keeping up on the reading--it is important that you read as you go. What you read on your topic may also cause you to adjust your topic. Again, that's O.K. !
- Keep an eye out for different terms that you are finding useful as your search. Write them down.
- Identify important authors that keep coming up then do some searching using their names.
- Keep it Anthropological (see the section further down on this page "Making Sure that Your Sources are Anthropological"
- Read the end first? Every time you find a good source, review the references at the end of the article, book, or chapter for more useful sources. Also, many databases will now tell you where future scholars used the article in their own research!
