Course Projects
-- Information for all stages
DUE OCT. 31
I. Topic
paragraph: Summarize the topic you will address in a paragraph
or two.
*Be sure to include the area of world, time period,
material and/or technology, and
*whether you will do a replication or an experiment (or
both)
*Be sure you have both a topic of social interest
AND a topic of hands-on work (hands-on will inform your
investigation of social importance of technology, but will not be
sufficient; you will need literature research too). For
ideas about a topic of social interest -- see future and past readings,
and ask for help.
*Please provide any references you have found; this
helps me to understand your topic, and also tells me what literature
you have found, and what you may be missing. Be sure to give the
full citations for the source(s), using the American Antiquity or
American Anthropologist format.
*You must type this paragraph, paying attention to
spelling, grammar and clarity of writing. It will also allow me
to give you feedback on your topic and references, before you start
down the wrong track. It is to your advantage to summit a well
thought out, well researched paragraph.
DUE
NOV. 28
II.
Annotated Bibliography: In proper bibliographic format,
list and annotate the books, articles, films, websites, and other
sources that you have found to date for your project. You may
include any relevant
readings assigned for class.
--Your entries must be CONCISE (points will be taken off for
unnecessary wordiness) yet provide an informative summary.
--Your bibliography should be relatively complete and represent
informed library and scholarly research abilities. If you need
advice on searching, please ask!
--See the handout
from the U of T New College Writing Centre for more information on
annotated bibliographies, then use the guidelines below for specific
requirements. The "Checklist for Critique"� handout from Tom
Klubi
of the Academic Skills Centre may also be helpful
CONTENT:
* For this class, EACH annotation should include the following
information.
--The central thesis of the work (the author's main claim or purpose);
if there are two main theses, list both, but try to keep to a minimum.
--If the central thesis of the work is not relevant to your research,
but a portion of the article is, include a summary of the theme/thesis
of the relevant section of the work.
--The data presented or used by the author.
--The intended audience of the work (researchers/scholars, school
children, amateur crafters, professional artists, etc.).
--The relevance or usefulness of this particular work to your project
topic; this may also include comparisons with other works in your
bibliography, and/or it may include your critique of the author's
conclusions.
**Overall, you should have a few sentences describing the content of
the work (theses, data), and a few sentences evaluating it.
STYLE:
*Do not use a cover page (save paper!). Instead, put your name,
date, and the course in the top left corner, and then put a centered
title below it. The title should be "Annotated Bibliography on .
. . .(your topic)"�.
*Be sure to use either American
Antiquity or American
Anthropologist format for your references. Cite the work fully,
then begin your annotation on the next line. Put a blank line between
each entry.
*Single-space or 1.5 space your bibliography entries.
*You may NOT use direct quotes in an annotated bibliography.
Please see below under "Final Paper: Citations"� for instructions
on paraphrasing. You should not use citations within your
annotation either, although if necessary you can indicate page numbers
in parentheses after the relevant sentence (p. 347). Note that
for the remaining submissions, you must use the proper American Antiquity or American Anthropologist citation
format -- no commas after the year!! (see below, "Final Paper:
Citations"�).
DUE JAN. 16
III.
Outline of Project: This assignment is intended to make certain
that you have thought out your entire project BEFORE you begin your
replication or experiment and your writing. If you plan to
do your replication/experiment over break, you should provide at least
a rough version of part A. of this assignment to the instructor for
feedback BEFORE the holidays.
The Outline consists of two parts; how closely they are related will
depend on your project.
A. Outline of production
process or experiment: Be sure to get feedback on your
project overview before you start work. This should be a
description of the expected process of your replication or
experiment. It can be either written in outline form (bulleted,
etc.), or presented as a production process diagram (flowchart), as in
the examples provided in class. The latter format (diagram)
is preferred.
This diagram or outline should include:
-Raw materials, tools, products &
by-products needed for each stage of production
-Recording tools & methods for each stage
(photos showing process as well as objects;
measurements; etc.)
The outline will help you to organize your thoughts, plan your time,
and have your materials, tools, recording systems and measurements all
planned and accounted for ahead of time, so you will have fewer
surprises along the way.
You should think NOW about taking pictures of intermediate stages of
construction of your object, which you can use to illustrate your paper
as well as your poster presentation. Or you can create unfinished
examples of various stages of production of the object, and show all of
these examples together in final photographs.
**Your TA and I will be able to solve potential problems ahead of time
if we can give you feedback on this well before you begin your
production.
**With advance notice, I can arrange the loan of a digital camera for
anyone who needs it.
B. Overview of Final Essay.
It is to your advantage to provide as much of an outline of your final
paper as you can at this point.
Please outline the
structure of what you plan to present, using the structure specified
for the Final Paper below.
Be sure to follow the
instructions below under "Organization of Paper"� for this part of your
outline, or you will lose marks. Your outline should
be hierarchically arranged, with each section labelled as to its
function and content. Any section that is subdivided should have
at least two sub-parts. You may use words and phrases instead of
complete sentences, but the information to be covered in each section
of the outline must be clear! This outline should allow me to
follow the basic structure and argument of your paper.
If you do not know how to write a hierarchically arranged outline, be
sure to get help on this ahead of time!
DUE for
printing on MARCH 5 - PRESENTED in
class on MARCH 12
IV. Poster
Presentations on Project: You will design a poster for
presentation of the main thesis and points of your project (both the
replication/experiment and the wider implications). The posters
will be presented to the class on March 12, and to other audiences
later in the term if you wish. We may be able to turn these
posters into web pages for a course "virtual museum"�, so be sure to
have proper attributions for any illustrations!
Use the feedback on your Outline (above) and the discussion of what to
include in posters and in your final paper (below) as guidelines. Try
out your presentation on friends, family, roommates. If they can
follow it without having taken this class, it's probably a good
presentation.
Please do not feel shy about asking for help and feedback before you
have to present this poster; I imagine few of you have ever done a
poster before.
We will arrange to have your posters printed at UTM; the cost will be
about $35 per poster, and I will see if I can get partial reimbursement
for you (no promises, but I'll try).
Content:
I will look for much the same sort of information as I have requested
for your paper, although not necessarily presented in the same way, and
not in as much detail. You may organize the poster as appropriate
for your topic, but here is an example of one way to proceed. **Note that you
will only have a few sentences (at most) for each section!
You can use visual aids to cut down the amount of space you have to
devote to explaining the production process -- flowcharts can help a
lot with this, especially ones with pictures instead of words.
And pictures or sketches can truly be worth the proverbial thousand
words.
(1) Start with an introductory statement telling us your topic, then
give us some background about where and when these objects were used,
and why this technology is/was important. Think about: what (is your topic) -- who, where, when (used the objects)
-- why (were they used and
why were they important to this society).
(2) Then focus on how the
objects were made -- the technology of production. Go through
step by step (would a flow chart of some kind be helpful here?
only use one if you think it would help people follow your
explanation), and explain throughout how you differed from the
authentic methods, or if you had to make educated guesses about the
technique of any particular step. Some of you may also need to
present information about the use of your object.
(3) Conclude with a statement about your results, particularly what you
found out by actually making and/or using the object (or at least
trying to) rather than just reading about the technology (if nothing,
be brave and tell us that!). You may want to discuss the why of
this object (above) here rather than in your introduction.
The relative length of time you spend on section 1 vs. section 2
will depend on your particular project -- some of you are focusing
mostly on production techniques (section 2), while others are focusing
on the role or use of the technologies or objects in the society
(section 1 and/or 3).
Many thanks to Deb Foran at the
Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre for the basic text for the
following sections on Aims and on Design.
Aims of
Poster Presentations. Your primary aim with a poster is to
present information on a specific topic and come to some
conclusions. In creating and designing your poster you should
have one overriding question in mind: what is the purpose of this
poster? You must take your audience into account and use
appropriate language. Your audience has to be able to understand
the information and conclusions you are presenting. Keep in mind
that your poster should be self-sufficient. Someone should only
approach you with questions if they want further details, and not
because they don't understand something.
Details:
The title of the poster and your name should be at the top and easily
visible, and the course number and/or name (ANT405: Technology, Society
and Culture), date (2007-2008), and affiliation (Anthropology,
University of Toronto at Mississauga) should be displayed where they
are easy to find, although they should not be as prominent as the title
and your name.
The final poster must easily fit onto a 1 meter by 2 meter poster (or
smaller). As a starting guideline, the text of the poster should
be no more than 2 pages; the bibliography and images are in
addition to this, but images should be carefully chosen and kept to the
minimum needed to make your points. BE SURE TO INCLUDE PROPER CITATIONS
in the text and for the illustrations (as you would for a paper), so
you are not plagiarizing!!!
**We will have a class demonstration
and (hopefully) some computer lab time for you to actually work on
creating your posters in Powerpoint. All photographs and
drawings will need to be digital;
we can help you create digital drawings if you let us know what you
want to do in advance.
Design:
Here are 4 basic guidelines to follow when constructing your poster:
(1) Decide on your conclusions and build your poster around them.
(2) Make sure that the message you are presenting is clear. To
ensure the clarity of your message use short, direct sentences.
(3) Your poster should make a visual impact.
(4) A good poster presents the right combination of text and
images. Your text should not overwhelm the poster. It
should however complement the images you choose and refer to these
images. Your images are there to provide necessary information,
information that is better communicated by visuals (maps, charts,
pictures, drawings) than by text. Your images are not just
decoration!
Fonts: Posters
should always use simple, easy-to-read fonts. The most common are
sans-serif fonts like Arial and related fonts, Helvatica, and
Geneva. You can make use of Bold,
Italics, Underlining, CAPITALS,
Different Sizes and Different Fonts for emphasis. Copperplate,
Comic Sans, Textile and other simple fonts make good fonts for titles
and special emphasis. Do NOT use script or elaborate fonts (like
Brush Script) in a presentation; these are too hard to read!
Questions to ask yourself about fonts: Are parts of the letters
not legible? Does the text not stand out enough?
Colour
Schemes:
Backgrounds should be plain, so as not to distract the
reader. For printed poster design, please use dark type on
a light background for your main text. Be careful about your use
of colour within the text for the same reason -- yellow prints out
poorly. This is OK if it is a minor part of your page -- titles,
emphasis, and so forth. Remember that colour can be
distracting if you use too many colours, especially in combination with
photographs or drawings.
Overall, the colours of your poster should be pleasing to the eye while
drawing the audiences attention to certain key areas. It is the
combination of certain colours that make something attractive or
striking. Always keep the colour wheel in mind when deciding on a
colour scheme.
--Analogous colours are any 3 colours that are side-by-side on the
colour wheel. They will look good together, but will not draw
your audience's attention to anything in particular.
--Complementary colours are any 2 colours that are directly opposite
each other on the colour wheel. By using complementary colours
you can immediately draw your audiences attention to a specific piece
of text or an image. Note that the human eye is drawn to RED
first.
(The colour wheel is available in colour on the class web-page, but I
won't spend your tuition money on colour handouts.)
More tips on
design will be provided throughout the semester; write them at the end
of this handout so you can keep them all in one place.
Bring this handout to every class!!
DUE March
26
V. Draft
of Papers: See below for information about the expected
format and content of the final papers, and produce a draft as close to
these requirements as possible.
Once you produce your first draft,
re-read it to be sure that it will be clear to anyone who has not read
the material or been in the class. Ask your roommate or
your family to read it. In other words, do not "write for the
instructor", but expect that your reader will need basic explanations
and information. Be sure to:
--Carefully describe specific examples from your reading and research.
--Include definitions of any archaeological or anthropological terms
you use (and you will need to use several). Acceptable sources
for definitions include anthropological encyclopedias (NOT Wikipedia)
or dictionaries or textbooks -- the library has several on reserve.
--As you write, insert citations and accumulate a References Cited
list, in the format specified below.
Writing Style
Now that you have a draft of your paper, you can focus on writing
style.
--Correct your grammar.
--Untangle complex sentences -- break them into two sentences, or
remove unnecessary phrases.
--Avoid use of the passive tense. If this is difficult for you,
get advance help.
--It is now perfectly acceptable in anthropology to use "I" in
published papers, and it helps me to understand which are your own
ideas, and which are from your reading.
--Be careful to identify ideas from others (see Citations), so you
don't commit plagiarism.
--Introduce your own ideas, where appropriate.
--Identify the topic sentences of your paragraphs in the body of your
paper and see that they match the summary of your main points, both in
the introduction and conclusion.
--Be sure to check for consistency in your introduction and concluding
statements. Write smooth transitional sentences and paragraphs.
--Write a title that is descriptive of the paper's main topic, and
include your name, the date, and the course. These should be at
the top of page 1 -- I prefer that you do not have a separate title
page, to conserve paper.
--Don't forget to spell-check and number your pages!
--Please carefully review the logical flow of your ideas, from your
introduction, through the body of the paper, to the conclusion.
This is often the main difference between an excellent (A) paper and a
good (B) paper. You will be marked on writing style, grammar and
spelling as well as content.
NOTE: Drafts must be
double-spaced, 12 point font with 1 inch margins
DUE APRIL 9
VI. Final
Papers: ALL SUBMISSIONS MUST BE TYPED, double-spaced, 12 point
font with 1 inch margins; the expected length for the final essay is
25-35 pages, not including tables, charts, and detailed records of
replicative or experimental procedure in Appendices.
Content
and Structure: (Also
see the section under Poster Presentations above.)
I expect you to include the following sections in your paper:
-- A formal introduction
with your thesis, explaining the aim of your project and an overview of
the body of the paper (what you are going to tell us).
Then in an order appropriate to your particular project:
-- Background/History section
to place the technology in space (have a map if appropriate) and
time. As appropriate, explain just a little about the society who
used it (especially if focusing on one group). As for your
presentations, think about who,
where, when (used the objects) and why (were they used and why were
they important to this society).
-- Data.
For those doing archaeologically-related projects, explain the
archaeological finds and/or data, and how these relate to your
replication efforts. For those doing ethnographically or
historically (textually) based projects, explain the sources you used.
-- Description of
Replication/Experiment. Describe your replication or
experiment, if central to your paper. (Papers more focused on
social issues can place the majority of this section in an Appendix at
the end of the paper.) Describe the reconstruction of the
production process as gathered from various sources. For any
steps for which you could not find information, explain what you
decided to do, and how you chose this approach (your reasoning).
Be sure to note any modifications you had to make to this process (what
you actually did), such as using modern tools. Note that I do NOT
expect you to detail every step of the entire production process in the
paper, but only those steps appropriate to your project aims. I
DO expect you to include a FLOWCHART and drawings or photos, as you did
for the labs. You can either put these in the text, or number
them and put them at the end -- but be sure to reference them at the
appropriate point in the text.
--Results / Social importance.
If appropriate for your topic, discuss your (experimental) results and
their implications for your topic. Be sure your argument is
logical and well-supported by your data, both from literature and your
own experience. Be sure to make it clear how your experimental or
replicative work relates to or informs on your larger project.
For papers focused more on social or cultural issues, discuss this
information here in more detail than you did in your Background.
How did your replicative work relate to these issues (if they
did)? Again, be sure your argument is logical and well grounded
in the information you have.
Finally,
-- Summarize your
paper's main points, including information from research and from
hands-on replication. Explain again either the importance of this
technology in the past and/or the importance of your approach to
understanding this technology. Be sure to show a logical
progression from your data to your thesis, which should be stated here.
You should NOT have any new material in the summary, just a concise
restatement of the main points of the paper.
Writing
Style: Review the tips under "V. Draft of Papers"� above.
Citations
and Referencing: Be sure to say where your information
comes from. You must cite your source whether or not you directly
quote the words of that source. In academic writing, anything
that is not general knowledge, but rather comes from your reading (in
this course or outside of it), and everything/idea that is
distinctively the work of a particular person gets a citation.
The citation is placed in the text immediately after the material used.
This is the case whether an actual quote is given, or whether you are
just giving credit to an author for information or an idea. The
citation should include the author and date, and in many cases, a page
number. You always need the page number if you are using a quote
or specific data. You can use just the author and date if you are
referring to a general idea that occurs throughout the work.
The citation is part of the sentence, so the punctuation comes after,
like this (Smith 2001:370). Or you can move the author's name to the
front and just enclose date and page in parentheses. For the
Style Guide we will use, always put the date & page immediately
after the author's name. Do not
use a comma.
For example: Smith (2001:370) provides new data about the
origins of agriculture in Ontario.
If you actually quote material from a source, be sure to use quotation
marks. Quotes longer than two lines must be block indented and
single spaced, and in that case no quotation marks are used.
Use quotes sparingly, limiting
their use to particularly apt statements that are ideal for the point
you wish to make. For the most part, you should be paraphrasing
the materials you read; that is, you should re-state the points in your
own words. This involves more than just changing a few words or
omitting portions of a sentence. Such changes are tantamount to
plagiarism -- see the guide to plagiarism at http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/plagsep.html.
However, even well-paraphrased material should be cited, as indicated
above. Here's an example of a quote:
"Digging these tombs would have
required massive co-ordinated labor, and since
many of the individuals buried in the tombs are elites bedecked with
exotic
ornaments and surrounded by fineware ceramics and figurines, it seems
clear that
these were built to house elites who were capable of amassing and
controlling a
large labor pool" (Peregrine 2003:230-231).
And a paraphrase: These tombs were likely built for elites who
controlled a large labour pool, as a great deal of labour would have
been needed to dig the tombs, and to supply the exotic ornaments and
fineware ceramics and figurines found in them (Peregrine 2003:230-231).
I still cite Peregrine, even though I don't quote him directly, because
this was not my own conclusion -- I got this idea from reading his
textbook. I provide the page numbers so that it will be easy for
the reader to find this reference, if desired. Note that when I
directly quote Peregrine, I leave the American spelling (labor), but
when I paraphrase, I use the Canadian spelling (labour). Also
note that quotes that are 2 lines or longer are indented, while
paraphrases are not.
References
Cited/ Bibliography: It is very important to
provide the necessary information so that other people can find the
sources of your information. This usually includes the authors,
dates, titles, publishers, and places of publication. For
this paper, I want you to provide a list of References Cited;
that is, only list the references you actually cite in your paper, not
all of the materials you may have found or consulted or that exist on
the topic (a bibliography).
Many conventions exist for the way references are formatted, and most
publishers specify the model they want. In North American archaeology,
the format developed by the journal American
Antiquity is frequently used. You may also use the American Anthropologist format, if
you prefer. I provide some examples below in American Antiquity style, and you
can look at the American Antiquity
Style Guide (http://www.saa.org/Publications/Styleguide/styframe.html)
for more details. If you have trouble with particular sources and
don't know what to do with them, ASK ME! Especially ask for help
with websites or other strange materials.
References Cited
Kamp, Kathryn
1998 Life
in the Pueblo: Understanding the Past Through Archaeology.
Waveland Press,
Inc., Prospect Heights, Illinois.
Thomas, David Hurst
1999 Archaeology.
Down to Earth. Second Edition. Harcourt Brace &
Company, Orlando,
Florida.
Smith, Robin
1998 Citing Sources in Anthropology
Papers. Journal of Academic Skills
27(4):20-29.
Miller, Heather M.-L.
1997 Pottery Firing Structures (Kilns)
of the Indus Civilization During the Third Millennium
B.C. In Prehistory & History of Ceramic Kilns,
edited by Prudence Rice and W. David
Kingery, pp. 41-71. Ceramics
& Civilization Series, Volume VII. American Ceramic
Society,
Inc., Columbus, Ohio.
Tamakoshi, Laura Zimmer
1997 Fieldwork: The Anthropologist
in the Field. Electronic document,
http://www.truman.edu/academics/ss/faculty/tamakoshil/index.html,
accessed March 8.