Subject Guide for ANTH 2120

Archaeology

Summer 2011

1. Basic Library Skills

If you haven't already done this, be sure to read through the basic library tutorials on our Library Homepage: Library Skills Tutorials. This is a series of three tutorials that explain:

how to use the library catalogue - TOPCAT;
how to create effective keyword searches;
how to find articles using indexes.

It will take about an hour to read through these tutorials, but it will save you well over an hour of wasted time if you don't understand how to use the library resources. You can read the pages yourself, or have them read to you as a slideshow - whichever you prefer.

2. Navigating to Online Articles

Your course outline provides citations to articles you are expected to read. When you already have a citation for a journal article, most of the work is done for you. You know the article exists, and you know where and when it was published:

The where is the title of the journal.
The when is the date, volume, and issue number.

The next step is to find out where you can get that volume of that journal. You'll use library sources to tell you if our library owns a copy of the journal, either online or in print (hard-copy).

Read the webpage on Reading Citations, so you understand how to tell the difference between an article citation and a book citation. This is essential, because you need to know what you're looking for before you begin to look.

Read the webpage on Navigating to Online Articles for information on getting to an online article from the citation. Most articles you need will be online.

Read the tutorial on Accessing Print Journals for information on finding print journals in the library. Only about 5% of our current journals are in print, but if you need older articles, you may find them in print.

Example

You are asked to read Flannery 1982; 2006.

Check the list of Additional Required Readings in your course outline. Works are listed in alphabetical order by author. Find "Flannery" and see these citations:

Flannery, K.V., 1982, The Golden Marshalltown, American Anthropologist, 84 (2): 265- 278.
Flannery, K.V., 2006, On the resilience of anthropological archaeology, Annual Review of Anthropology, 35: 1-13.

For the 1982 article, locate the periodical (journal) title American Anthropologist in TOPCAT or Journal Titles Available Online. You'll find that we only have it online, and from several different providers. Follow the link to one of the provider's sites and locate volume 84, issue 2. You should be able to navigate to the article and download it as a .pdf or .html document.

Follow the same steps for the Annual Review of Anthropology. It, too, is available online from several providers.

The reason you can access these journals online is because the library pays for a subscription. If you try to find them outside the library system (through Google, for instance), you will not be able to access the articles. Use the library links and you'll have access whether you're on campus or not.

Abbreviations

Sometimes an abbreviation is used for the journal title, because it's a well-known (but long) title. You may need to search for the full title in order to find it.

Example: PNAS is actually
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Fortunately, you can usually find it with only the first few words of the title: "Proceedings of the National".
Choose "Starts with" in "Journal Titles Available Online" or "Browse Titles" in TOPCAT.

Special Mention: Nature and Science

Some of the articles you need are from Nature or Science. These journals are published often (weekly) and each issue contains numerous short articles, which means you may find yourself browsing several screens to get to the article you need. It looks complicated, but you can figure it out.

They're usually listed in reverse order (most recent at the top).
The format is date; volume (issue): pages
This is one of the few journals where the issue number is higher than the volume number.

25 March 2010; 464 (7288): 465 - 640
18 March 2010; 464 (7287): 325 - 456
11 March 2010; 464 (7286): 141 - 316
4 March 2010; 464 (7285): 10 - 132

Notice that the page numbering starts over with each new volume,
but issue numbers continue.

25 February 2010; 463 (7284): 999 - 1112
18 February 2010; 463 (7283): 849 - 990
11 February 2010; 463 (7282): 709 - 840
4 February 2010; 463 (7281): 587 - 700

We keep current issues of Science in the Multimedia Room in the Bata Library.

3. Evaluating Web Resources

Assignment 1 requires you to critically evaluate the reliability and authority of a web resource.

Searching the Web

Many web resources are available to anyone for free. Many others are only available to those who have subscribed, or who belong to a library that has subscribed. To access sources available to Trent University students, be sure to use links on the library's website, or set your preferences correctly in Google Scholar. You may find something of interest on our E-Resources page or the Subject Guide for Anthropology.

Google Scholar is a version of Google that's designed to find scholarly information. Read our webpage on Using Google to ensure you can link to library resources with restricted access.

Evaluating Websites
See our webpage on Evaluating Websites to gain some insite into determining the authority of a website. Our tutorial on Scholarly Sources explains the difference between "popular" and "scholarly" journals.

4. Finding Scholarly Articles

Finding your own scholarly articles for this course requires searching an online index for citations to articles of interest.

Keyword Searching

You've already read the online tutorial on Keyword Searching Techniques and you understand how to select and apply keywords in a search. It's vital that you think about which terms are important to your topic and which ones should be left out. Before you start to search, make a list of the terms you plan to use.

Keyword Example

archaeology

Using this keyword may help to narrow a topic if you're using a more general database, but it may be redundant if you're using an Anthropology database, depending on the topic.
Sometimes it's spelled "archeology" (no 'a').
archaeolog* will find "archaeological" and "archaeology" in most search engines.
On its own it's probably too broad a topic, but combined with another keyword it may help eliminate irrelevant items: archaeolog* and pottery.

Finding Articles Using an Online Index

An index is a tool used to find citations to journal articles. You search the index using a keyword search, read the citations that look appropriate for your topic, and then follow the links to locate the full article. Sometimes you get results quickly, and other times you can spend hours searching for the right articles. It depends upon your topic, the database you choose to search, and the words you search for. You've already read online tutorial on Finding Articles Using an Index and you understand the process used to find articles.

The Trent Library subscribes to many different indexes, and it may be tricky to choose the best database for your topic. The databases useful for Archaeology are listed below (in alphabetical order). Each has strengths and weaknesses and they don't all cover the same journal titles. Try several to find articles that work for your topic.

Online Indexes of Interest to Archaeology
Abstracts in Anthropology	Trent	description	Citations
Anthropological Index Online (1960's to the present)	Public	description	Citaitons
AnthroSource an online index and full-text access to AAA journals	Trent	description	C & FT
ProQuest Anthropology Databases (search several databases at once)	Trent	description	C & FT
Social Sciences / Arts & Humanities Citation Index in Web of Science (see below)	Trent	description	Citations
More General Sources
Academic OneFile a general index with many full text articles	Trent	description	C & FT
Academic Search Elite (EBSCOhost) a general index with many full-text articles	Trent	description	C & FT
ALPSP Journals through Swets	Trent	description	FT
ARTstor	Trent	description	Images
Bibliography of Native North Americans	Trent	description	Citations
Bibliography of the History of Art	Public	description	Citations
JSTOR (online journal storage for 1100+ journals in a variety of subjects)	Trent	description	FT
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt	Trent	description	Reference
Scholars Portal Journals - search the majority of Trent e-journals at once	Trent	description	FT

Web of Science

The Web of Science is a unique database because it allows you to search backward and forward through time, following a trail of papers. Not only can you find what's been written on a topic, but you can also find out who else used this paper in their research and who cited the same papers as this paper. This is called cited reference searching, and it's a very valuable way to follow the progress of an idea.

Image of Cited Reference Searching .

See the webpage on Cited Reference Searching to see how it works.

5. RefWorks

Use RefWorks to keep track of your citations as you find them. Simply export them into your RefWorks account, create a folder for your assignment, and place all your citations in the folder. They'll be easy to locate later - and they include the button to link to the full article.

Direct Link to

6. Further Help

If you need further help with the research process, contact Jean Luyben, Learning & Liaison Librarian for Anthropology.

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Last Modified: July 6, 2011
Maintained by , Thomas J. Bata Library.