THE CENTER
The Columbia Center for Archaeology fosters links between all faculty and students concerned with the study of the past, materiality, and the relationship between the past and the present. Our offices are located on the 9th floor of Schermerhorn Extension, along with computer facilities, the CCA teaching lab, microscope lab, lecture/seminar room, and some faculty offices. Our rotating installation exhibit The 9th Floor Case is also located in the same hallway.
Detail of Lucy Mitchell’s 2018 installation ‘Still Life with Questions’
The Center holds regular events, such as conferences, guest lectures and research seminars, student presentations, and informal social gatherings. We also coordinate information on Columbia archaeology courses, fieldwork opportunities and the New York Archaeological Consortium.
Archaeology at Columbia
Archaeology is the study of the material conditions inhabited and acted upon by people, both in the past and in the present. Investigation of the past through the study of material remains is entangled with historiography, politics, and individual and collective memory, and is implicated in the production of present-day identities. Archaeology has come to mean many things to different generations of scholars, yet all approaches share a common focus on the physical remains of the past and the relationship of these traces to the interpretive acts through which they are understood.
At Columbia, archaeology is a multidisciplinary field practiced by faculty and students in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. At present, there are faculty in a range of departments conducting research on prehistory, ancient society, or historical archaeology.
Locations where students and faculty are undertaking field research and study include Argentina, Peru, the North American Southwest, New York City, the UK, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, China and Madagascar. Archaeologists at Columbia also work with professionals at a wide range of institutions in New York.
Columbia archaeology is fortunate to be located in a city with fantastic resources for archaeological research. We have close links with the Nan A. Rothschild Research Center of the New York City Archaeological Repository and our students often work with materials held at the Repository as part of their classes.
Students also often secure internships at the Respository or other institutions in the city. Some of these include the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the National Museum of the American Indian, the New York Botanical Garden, and the South Street Seaport Museum.
