Anthropology at Southeast

Anthropology is unique in its holistic, cross-cultural, and time-depth approach to the study of what it means to be a human being. Anthropologists are holistic in that they deal with all parts of culture, such as interrelationship between economic, political, religious, kinship, and child rearing practices of a society. Major subfields taught at Southeast Missouri State University include archaeology which studies the traces or remnants of human behavior and gives anthropology its unique time-depth to studying humans; physical anthropology, which deals with humans as biological organisms; and social/cultural anthropology, which studies human cultures, particularly, but not exclusively, non-Western, non-urbanized societies.

The faculty in the department have obtained advanced degrees at a variety of outstanding graduate schools, and represent a broad range of interests in anthropology. Joint cooperation for research and study exists between the anthropology program and the University Museum, which houses a substantial collection of prehistoric North American artifacts. Every summer the anthropology program conducts an archaeological field school which teaches excavation methods and procedures at a site in the region. Special emphasis is placed on excavation and survey techniques.