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Archaeology

A guide to resources, digital projects and specialized topics for the study of archaeology as an interdisciplinary field of research on the past and present.

About this Guide

Archaeology at Brown is represented across a variety of disciplines and institutes. This guide aims to provide a basic level of coverage in available scholarly resources for students and researchers of archaeology from all subfields and persuasions. Geographically and temporally it is nearly impossible to comprehensively treat all the resources out there. Where there is a focus to this guide it is given to the regions of the Mediterranean and the Near East, however, some effort has been taken to provide coverage of other key archaeological regions and time periods, such as Mesoamerica, New England, Medieval Europe, North Atlantic, and China.

If you're new to writing college level research papers, you might like to take a look at our guide below:

 

Ruins of ancient temple

Palmyra: Temple of Bel, 32 CE. Photograph by Juan Llanos via Creative Commons license.

Research evaluation

It can be hard sometimes to know whether a source is trustworthy or not. One quick method is the following. It's not foolproof but it does give you some things to think about when evaluating a source.:

Try asking yourself the following questions:

  1. Currency: How up to date is the information in this site?
  2. Relevance: How relevant is the information for your needs? Is it an appropriate level (not too elementary or too advanced)?
  3. Authority: Who is responsible for the information in this source? What are their credentials?
  4. Accuracy: Does the source provide evidence to support the information? Can it be found elsewhere?
  5. Purpose: What is the purpose? Is it to teach, sell, persuade?

Of course, Karen can also help you determine the validity of any resource you might be unsure about.

The above test was developed by librarian Sarah Blakeslee and her team at California State University, Chico.

Related Guides

You may also find one or more of the following guides helpful to your research: