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Team Project: Human Bones - ARC00013I

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• Department: Archaeology
• Module co-ordinator: Dr. Paola Ponce
• Credit value: 20 credits
• Credit level: I
• Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
  • See module specification for other years: 2020-21 2021-22

Module summary

The Team Project provides an opportunity to apply the experience and knowledge gained during the Practical Skills where students have been introduced to the identification and analysis of human skeletal remains and have learnt how to diagnose pathological conditions in bones. You will be working in teams on a set of human skeletons from an archaeological cemetery in order to record, analyse and interpret osteological data with the aim of preparing and producing a report of a professional standard.

Students have said that they enjoyed working in teams and completing the report together as this meant that workload was split between team members.

Related modules

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching cycle
A	Summer Term 2022-23

Module aims

Building upon the practical option that you took in the Spring term (Term 5), Team Projects allows you to practice the subject-specific skills that you learnt over that period. The module will split students into teams to analyse and evaluate a dataset or case study with the overall aim of producing a report to professional standards on the material they have examined.

 

This specific module aims to:

 

• To provide experience in working as a team on a shared project

• To build skills in the recording, analysis and interpretation of human bone data

• To train, through practice, the skills necessary to the production of a professional-standard archaeological report.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

• Undertake the recording and reporting of an assemblage of human bones, applying well-known theories and techniques
• Match recording and analytical methods to research aims and objectives
• Appreciate the importance of consistency, time-keeping, and good record-keeping in practical work
• Allocate and co-ordinate tasks, and communicate efficiently as a team
• Produce a group report to a professional standard

Module content

With the Team Project: Human Bones, students will be grouped in randomly allocated teams of 4-5 members and work on a set of 9-10 skeletons per team based on one of the skeletal collections housed at Palaeohub. The module leader will guide you through and support you for the first four sessions but the teams will continue working independently for the remainder of the module. Team members will allocate and co-ordinate practical and analytical tasks in order to analyse and record the human remains necessary for the production of an osteological report of a professional standard.

Assessment

Task	Length	% of module mark
Groupwork Report	N/A	100

Special assessment rules

None

Reassessment

Task	Length	% of module mark
Essay/coursework Report	N/A	100

Module feedback

Formative: Groups keep logbooks of work carried out and discuss progress with their module leader each week.

Summative: Written feedback sheets will be released within 20 working days of the submission deadline, along with your overall mark for the module. If you have any questions about your mark and/or your written feedback, you will be able to sign up for office hours with the marker.

Indicative reading

Buikstra, J. 2019. Ortner’s Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains, Buikstra, J. (Ed) London: Academic Press

Roberts, C., Cox, M. 2003. Health and Disease in Britain: From Prehistory to Present Day. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. 

Waldron, T. 2007. Palaeoepidemiology. The Measure of Disease in the Human Past. California, Left Coast Press.

Detailed reading for the module will be available via YorkShare (the University's virtual learning environment). When you have enrolled on a module, you will be able to access the full reading list.