Anthropology
With its broadly based curiosity about humankind, anthropology involves a variety of human experiences. While archaeology and physical anthropology explore the biological and prehistoric aspects of the evolutionary process, cultural anthropology and linguistic anthropology examine those practices that have allowed human beings to emerge as manipulators of environments and creators of communities, customs, and myths.
In an area particularly rich with prehistoric Native American artifacts and earthen mounds, ethnic American technology, and folkways, Luther’s anthropology program tests its classroom studies and theories against substantial local expressions of prehistoric and historic cultures extending from 9000 B.C. to the present. Additionally, a laboratory containing thousands of prehistoric and historic artifacts provides an environment where analysis integrates concepts from biology, geology, history, sociology, and other academic areas that lend understanding to the mosaic of human experience and evolution.
Putting their theory to practice, some Luther students have worked during the summer on excavations, on Native American reservations, or in culturally diverse metropolitan centers. Other students have taken extended field trips to Nepal, Tanzania, and other areas of choice during January Term.
Luther's anthropology program also includes studies of a variety of cultural activities, institutions, and ethnic communities in Northeast Iowa. Understanding familiar cultural patterns provides the foundation for understanding those that are unfamiliar.