Amaia Arranz-Otaegui

Abstract

From past to future: Identifying strategic contents for a new bachelor program in Archaeology

In few years time the Department of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies at the Faculty of Humanities will implement a new bachelor (BA) that will potentially focus on “Ancient Civilisations” and will merge four programmes: Near Eastern Archaeology, Egyptology, Assyriology and American-Indian Studies. A major issue is that researchers specialised in Near Eastern Archaeology work with non-written sources, that is, the material culture of the past; whereas researchers specialised in Egyptology, Assyriology and AmericanIndian Languages and Culture focus primarily on the study of written sources, and therefore use linguistic and iconographic approaches. Hence, there are important challenges in the merging of this four BA programs. The main goal of this project is to determine which of contents in Near Eastern Archaeology could be most strategic and useful for future students. For this purpose I carry out a survey and examine the relationship between students future prospects, the intended learning outcomes of the current BA program and the possibilities that the job-market offers nowadays. Based on this data I evaluate which contents are most strategic and propose two possible structures for the new BA program.