Courses

Fall 2026

ANTH 4102/EAST 4102

This course examines the political, social, and material worlds of mobile pastoralist societies that shaped East Asian history from the 3rd century BCE through the 14th century CE. Groups including the Xiongnu, Turks, Khitan Liao, Jurchen-Chin, and Mongols built complex polities that rivaled and often conquered their sedentary agricultural neighbors, yet they have frequently been dismissed as "barbarian" raiders or excluded from definitions of "states" altogether. We trace the historical trajectories of steppe societies as distinct from yet deeply entwined with the histories of other East Asian regions, asking: How did mobile pastoralists organize political power? How did their interactions with agrarian states shape both pastoralist and sedentary societies? And fundamentally, what does it mean to call something a ‘state’? Through archaeological evidence, historical texts, and comparative analysis, students explore how pastoralist groups have been studied, represented, and misunderstood. We examine political organization, military structures, material culture, foodways, and daily lifeways, while interrogating the categories and assumptions scholars use to make sense of the past. The structuring question of this course—Do pastoralist states exist, and is that a meaningful category of analysis?—speaks to broader debates about power, identity, and state formation that extend beyond East Asia.

Meetings: Fridays 1:30-3:25 pm

Instructors: Aspen Greaves

Age of Empires: Archaeology of Ancient Powers

ARCG 3260

Empire is one of the most complex political forms in human history, reshaping landscapes, economies, technologies, and ideologies across vast territories. This seminar examines premodern empires prior to European colonialism through their material signatures: cities, agrarian systems, craft production, infrastructure, ritual landscapes, and provincial integration. Using comparative case studies from Qin/Han China, Angkor, the Aztec and Inka, Achaemenid Persia, Egypt, Vijayanagara, Mongol polities, and others, students analyze how imperial centers projected authority across diverse geographies and how provincial communities negotiated autonomy. The course concludes with examination of imperial fragility, environmental stress, transformation, and memory. We adopt a comparative anthropological archaeology framework and emphasize material evidence—settlement archaeology, bioarchaeology, geospatial analysis, archaeometry, and production systems—as the primary basis for interpretation. The course complements existing Yale offerings on empire and social complexities by foregrounding archaeological method and non-European case studies within a global comparative framework.

Meetings: Thursdays 9:25-11:20 am

Instructors: Piphal Heng