REU SITE: The Lower Cacaulapa Valley Project, NW Honduras: A Program for Undergraduate Research in Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology

该计划旨在为积极进取的本科生，特别是妇女和少数民族提供机会，在洪都拉斯西北部下卡库拉帕项目的背景下工作，发展他们作为人类学领域科学家的技能。课程将以学生进行重要的独立实地调查为中心，从阐明假设到最终撰写结果，并辅以实地课堂教学和学生与pi之间互动既容易又激烈的生活和工作环境。参与者将参加一个共同的核心研讨会，这些研讨会将向他们介绍考古和民族志的方法和理论，并使他们对他们将在其中生活和工作的政治、文化和经济背景敏感。考古和人种学实地程序方面的密集培训将为确定和开展独立研究项目奠定基础。这些调查将是对现代和古代文化进程的重要探索，以前的学生对当地史前和当代行为模式的理解做出了重大贡献。本课程的学习将建立在两位主任过去在野外环境中与本科生合作和教学的丰富经验的基础上，特别是他们在1988年、1990年、1992年、1995年和1996年在洪都拉斯纳科山谷指导的NSF REU站点项目。该项目的最终目标是帮助学生从新手研究助理成长为对自己独立决策和贡献科学知识的能力充满信心的初级同事。1988-1996年的努力形成了该计划的模式，非常成功地实现了这些目标，并决定将该项目延长到2000年。

This program is designed to give highly motivated undergraduates, especially women and minorities, the chance to develop their skills as anthropological field scientists while working within the context of the Lower Cacaulapa Project in NW Honduras. The curriculum will center on student conduct of a significant independent field investigation, from enunciation of a hypothesis to final write-up of results, supported by in-field class instruction and a living and working situation in which interaction among students and PIs is as easy as it is intense. Participants will take a common core of seminars that will introduce them to archaeological and ethnographic method and theory and sensitize them to the political, cultural, and economic context in which they will be living and working. Intensive training in archaeological and ethnographic field procedures will set the stage for definition and pursuit of the independent research project. These investigations will be significant explorations of modern and ancient cultural processes, previous students having contributed significantly to understandings of local prehistory and contemporary behavior patterns. This course of study will be founded on the directors' considerable experience in collaborating with and teaching undergraduates within field settings in the past, most particularly on NSF REU Site projects that they directed in the Naco Valley, Honduras, during 1988, 1990, 1992, 1995, and 1996.The ultimate goal of the project is to help students grow from neophyte research assistants to junior colleagues who are confident in their abilities to make independent decisions and contribute to scientific knowledge. The 1988-1996 efforts, which form the model for the program, accomplished these objectives very successfully and led to the decision to extend the project to 2000.