The M.A. in Applied Archaeology prepares students to meet the needs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania while also meeting the state and federal professional requirements so that they may work nationwide as applied or professional archaeologists.
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Graduate student Germaine McArdle surveying archaeological sites in New Mexico, Summer 2009
The IUP Graduate School and Anthropology Department are now accepting applications for M.A. in Applied Archaeology for the Fall 2010 semester. Because there is no deadline for admission, student applications are reviewed on a rolling basis; the deadline for applications for financial aid, including graduate assistantships, is March 15. To apply, complete the on-line or printed application available at How to Apply. Select for a pdf of the program details.
The program includes 36 hours of graduate coursework. All students will take a required common core of 15 credits, 15 credits of electives, and six credits of thesis and/or internship. For more information, contact Dr. Phillip Neusius (phillip.neusius@iup.edu), chair of the IUP Anthropology Department
Graduates with a master’s degree in Applied Archaeology may be employed by a variety of public and private employers. For example, Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic region will need more trained professionals to assist in the growth of the fields of historic preservation and heritage tourism, the most rapidly expanding segment of the tourism industry, Pennsylvania’s second largest industry. The governor, the state legislature, and in particular the General Assembly’s Center for Rural Pennsylvania have long recognized the need to combine research on cultural and historical preservation with tourism. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate have, in the past, unanimously passed resolutions recognizing the importance of the state’s historic and prehistoric features. A recent House resolution calls for a statewide inventory of historically significant structures. Tourism has been recognized by the state as an important, in some cases key, economic force, and many state agencies have stated that Pennsylvania should use historic preservation to its economic advantage, improving the state’s economy while also promoting a sense of regional and state pride. For example, Governor Rendell recently launched a cabinet-level task force on the Pennsylvania Wilds to encourage “heritage tourism,” combining officials from the Department of Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office, and other agencies.
The Master of Arts in Applied Archaeology is a program designed to meet industry and government needs for professional archaeologists. Most of these graduates will be employed in the fields of cultural resource management, historic preservation, public archaeology, and heritage planning and tourism. All of these, especially Cultural Resource Management, are multidisciplinary fields in which applied professional archaeologists work with historians, geographers, architectural historians, engineers, planners, and environmental specialists. Graduates of the program will work for engineering and environmental firms and conduct archaeological investigations on PennDOT, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Allegheny National Forest, and National Park Service construction projects. By law, they will be involved in local borough or township projects such as wastewater treatment, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission-regulated Natural Gas pipeline construction, and cell tower constructions, to name a few. Several recent studies by the Society for American Archaeology have found that there is a continuing and increasing need for archaeologists with applied M.A. degrees, and there are very few programs in the United States that offer such training.
The goal of the M.A. in Applied Archaeology is to produce graduates who
- are trained in the subjects required for professional archaeologists, including preservation law, ethics, business, and archaeology and who have the writing skills to prepare technical reports as well as publications for the general public
- meet the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s standards (36CFR61) for professional archaeologists upon graduation (an option for individuals already employed in the field of CRM) or meet all the requirements except for a full year of experience as a project supervisor (an option for students who enter the program immediately after graduation with a B.A. degree)
- have specialized training in technical skills such as human osteology, faunal analysis, artifact analysis, and geophysical surveys such as the use of electrical resistivity, magnetometers, and ground penetrating radar
In other words, our objective is to produce graduates who have the discipline-specific knowledge, technical training, and experience to be employed as professional archaeologists in a variety of settings, including private environmental consulting and engineering firms, national and state agencies, museums, and the historic preservation and heritage tourism industries.
