Minor Overview
- About this minor
- This minor aims to combine learning in archaeology and geoscience to develop conceptual knowledge and practical skills that are applied to deciphering the history of humans and their interactions with geological landscapes in Western Australia and beyond. Students will learn principles and methods from geoscience, e.g. characterising Earth materials and interpreting rock-forming and landscape-forming geological processes, and apply them to types and sources of archaeological materials (e.g. stone tools and rock art). Students will gain experience in recognising and interpreting archaeological artefacts and their geological contexts and with reference to past human lifeways in Western Australia and globally. Completion of this minor gives students the option of participating in ARCY2005 Doing Archaeology: Rock Art Fieldschool. This minor is useful for students in areas such as finance, commerce, law and engineering who aspire to careers in the resources sector in Western Australia, as well as for a broad range of students who seek to develop broader interdisciplinary skills and knowledge to complement their studies, e.g. students in education, environmental science, geography and history. For students taking a minor which shares units with their other unit sets (majors or minors): in order for minors to be recognised on academic and graduation documents, students may only have a maximum of one unit overlapping between their unit sets.
- Outcomes
- Students are able to (1) explain how archaeologists reconstruct past human behaviour from material remains; (2) demonstrate understanding of basic geological processes that generate materials and shape landscapes and the temporal–spatial scales over which these processes operate; (3) make reliable observations about the composition and features of common Earth materials to interpret their origin; (4) evaluate archaeological evidence for human origins, acitivities and habitation of inland and coastal zones; and (5) effectively communicate results and interpretations in relevant graphical, oral and written forms.
- Incompatibility
MJD-GEOGY Geology;
MJD-IEMDM Integrated Earth and Marine Sciences;
MJD-GECDM Geochemistry;