Education & Opportunities
Education & Opportunities
Opportunities
Dr. Christine Bergmann, the Co-Director of the IASCE Archaeobotanical and Paleoecological Laboratory, is seeking student volunteers to conduct research in a laboratory setting. The tasks will include, but are not limited to, processing local and international soil and sediment samples for various scientific analyses (including pollen analysis), learning to handle, process, and ship foreign sediment samples in accordance with USDA-APHIS and EH&S guidelines, and learning to handle, use, and dispose of hazardous waste.
The laboratory is located in the USF-Tampa Science Center. Lab experience is preferred, but not necessary. Only serious inquiries, please. If interested, contact Dr. Christine Bergmann.
Courses
COURSES IN FALL 2025
ANT 4930 / ANG 5937 Economic Anthropology (Department of Anthropology)
Dr. Charles Stanish
This course invites students to look beyond modern spreadsheets to uncover the deep history of human survival and wealth. Economic Anthropology (ANT 4930 / ANG 5937) examines how societies, from ancient Andean chiefdoms to modern global networks鈥攐rganize labor, define value, and distribute resources. The curriculum explores the transition from gift-based reciprocity and communal labor to the birth of formal markets and trade. Students will challenge Western assumptions of "rational" behavior by analyzing the diverse social and political structures that have powered human economies for millennia.
COURSES IN SPRING 2026
EUH 3673 Food and Drink in Classical Antiquity (Department of History)
Dr. Davide Tanasi
From Prehistory through the information age, food has been the foundation of economies. Dating back to 100 CE, Roman poet Juvenal measured popular support for the emperor by his ability to provide 鈥渂read and circuses鈥, and now even in 2020, debate rages in the U.S. about who is impoverished enough to receive food stamps. The consumption of food is an unbroken reality of human history. It has touched everyone regardless of age, gender, race, class, or nationality. Despite this continuity of consumption, much has changed from how the ancient Romans baked their bread to how we purchase ours at the nearest Publix. Using written, iconographic and archaeological sources combined with contributions from biomolecular chemistry, this course will focus on material culture of food (aka materiality of food) in Graeco-Roman cultures.