Archaeology

Principal Periodical Databases

  • JSTOR
    Full text of core scholarly journals not including the latest 3-5 years. Searches can be restricted to archaeological journals.
  • America: History and Life
    An index to journals covering the history and prehistory of the U.S. and Canada
  • Historical Abstracts
    An index to journals covering the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the U.S. and Canada). Unfortunately no coverage of ancient civilizations nor pre-history
  • AnthroSource
    Full text access to American Anthropological Association journals. Limited coverage of archaeology and ethnoarchaeology.
  • ATLA religion database with ATLASerials
    Principally an index to religion and theology journals, but includes coverage of biblical and some classical archaeology.
  • Nature
    Over many decades, Archaeology has been a strong component of this premier science journal.
  • AATA Online (Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts)
    A database of abstracts of literature related to the preservation and conservation of material cultural heritage.

Call Numbers

  • CC: Archaeology
    Here you'll find books on archaeology as a discipline, and related subjects such as methodology, preservation, and study and teaching
  • GN281-289: Human evolution. Human fossils. Human paleontology
    As long as the emphasis in on the anthropological perspective, books will be found here. If the approach is more biological, the book will be found in QH368.
  • GN700-890: Prehistoric archaeology
    Here you'll find books on actual archaeological sites, excavasions, and antiquities, but only from the most ancient of days, and not all books on those topics will be here.
  • D through F: History
    Here you may find books about archaeological sites, excavasions, and antiquities, if they date back only as far as the historical era. For example, some books on the archaeology of Africa will be found in the DTs, but others will be found in the GNs. Most books on the archaeology of Indians of North America will be found between E77 and E99.

Reference Works

Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology , 2008.
Oxford Companion to Archaeology , 1996.

Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
Archatlas

Subject Headings

  • Archaeology
    Use for works on the discipline of archaeology. Use with name of place as a subheading for a narrower focus. Use subheadings such as
    Archaeology--Methodology and  Archaeology--Field work for more specific aspects of Archaeology
  • For the archaeology of a specific people or place, it is often better to use the name of the people or place as the subject heading with Antiquities as the subheading. For example, Mayas--Antiquities, Indians of South America--Andes Region--Antiquities, Southwest, New--Antiquities,  Balkan Peninsula--Antiquities, or Rome--Antiquities
  • Excavations (Archaeology)
    Use with name of place as a subheading for locating works on archaeological sites.
  • Prehistoric peoples
    Use with name of place as a subheading for a narrower focus.
  • Use Art, Prehistoric for such things as rock paintings and cave paintings, but use  Art, Primitive for traditional art of the preliterate and nonindustrialized people. There will be overlap.
  • Paleontology
    Only some of the works will deal with human paleontology, however.
  • For other topics related to Archaeology, try your best at out-guessing the catalogers who have assigned subject headings. Try several synonyms, related or broader terms if necessary.

Images

ARTstor
Archaeology Image Bank

Resources for Primary Sources

Internet Archive: Texts & Hathi Trust

Both resources contain a wide range of books, both fiction and non-fiction. Many historical texts that are no longer in print or commercially available and older than 1922 can be freely accessed in full-text. An advantage of the Internet Archive and the Hathi Trust over GoogleBooks, is that texts are available in multiple formats and, with certain limits in place, pages or whole works can be printed, copied, and downloaded.

Smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Contact Us

picture of John Henderson

John Henderson

Social Sciences Librarian
(607) 274-1961

SAA Style Guide

The Society for American Archaeology publishes its own style manual. The SAA Style Guide is available as a PDF from the society's website.

Archaeology-related Web Sites

tDAR is an international digital archive of data about archaeological investigations, research, resources, and scholarship. Included in the database are digital documents, data sets, images, GIS files, and other data resources from archaeological projects spanning the globe.
Digital Antiquity is a collaborative non-profit organization with two goals: to improve access to archaeological information and to provide long-term preservation of the irreplaceable records of archaeological investigations.
Archaeology Data Service, based in the UK, makes available unpublished fieldwork reports covering archaeological interventions such as excavation reports and building surveys.