Program Overview

Beginning in 1997, the department grouped applicants into one of four categories:

Anthropology of Community Health and Development
Applied Biological Anthropology
Historical Archaeology
Resource Management and Cultural Practice

Under the Internships icon you can review the work of MAA graduates in these classifications.

In 2004, in preparation for the eventual development of a Ph.D. program, the faculty reorganized the way in which it works with students. All MAA students will be required to identify and articulate a program that integrates one or more of the following areas of concentration :

Anthropology of Environment
Anthropology of Health
Anthropology of Heritage

These areas of concentration are intended to incorporate rather than to replace the four earlier categories of specialization.

For details about these areas of concentration, refer to the Graduate Program home page.

(See the Special Message from the Chair and Graduate Director.)

Areas of study can include :

• anthropological contributions to such fields as :
  • agricultural development
  • natural resources management
  • tourism and heritage development
  • and urban and/or regional planning
• archaeology and tourism
• bio-cultural aspects of human nutrition
• bio-history of African peoples
• biological approaches to human disease
• broad development issues in "Third World"
• communities in the United States or abroad
• community-based development
• cultural and environmental conservation
• cultural and gender aspects of development
• cultural and heritage tourism
• cultural resource management
• development of communities, organizations, or individual / family units.
• folk life and oral history
• gene-environment interactions
• genomic modeling
• health issues
• historic archaeology
• historic preservation
• human-plant co-evolution
• local community development / organizing
• natural resources management
• public interpretation
• sustainable agricultural development
• tourism development and planning

Faculty have established relationships with various organizations and have developed programs in which MAA students may participate. These include, for example : Archaeology in Annapolis, various endeavors of the National Park Service, the Cultural Systems Analysis Group (CuSAG), and the Center for Heritage Resource Studies.