Help me figure out what academic articles to read
May 26, 2011 9:24 PM Subscribe
Help me figure out what academic articles to read
I'm currently a undergraduate studying archaeology and I'm planning on going to grad school to get my doctorate. When I talked to my advisor, he suggested that I start reading academic articles to get an idea of the field and prepare for grad school. (This had occurred to me, but it hearing it from him was motivating).
I'm planning on reading a lot of articles this summer and I have access to a ton of journals though my school. Right now, I feel overwhelmed by everything I've found and I don't know where to start. I have a general idea of what I want to study (either osteoarchaeology or geoarchaeology in Mesoamerica) but it's still a really wide range and I want to narrow it down further by reading articles to figure out what I find most interesting.
Should I try to read/skim all the back issues? Find an article I like and follow its citations? How much should I be remembering about the article? I like reading the articles but I feel like I don't know what articles are important to the field and which ones are considered wrong now and which are mainstream vs. out there.
Thanks!
I'm currently a undergraduate studying archaeology and I'm planning on going to grad school to get my doctorate. When I talked to my advisor, he suggested that I start reading academic articles to get an idea of the field and prepare for grad school. (This had occurred to me, but it hearing it from him was motivating).
I'm planning on reading a lot of articles this summer and I have access to a ton of journals though my school. Right now, I feel overwhelmed by everything I've found and I don't know where to start. I have a general idea of what I want to study (either osteoarchaeology or geoarchaeology in Mesoamerica) but it's still a really wide range and I want to narrow it down further by reading articles to figure out what I find most interesting.
Should I try to read/skim all the back issues? Find an article I like and follow its citations? How much should I be remembering about the article? I like reading the articles but I feel like I don't know what articles are important to the field and which ones are considered wrong now and which are mainstream vs. out there.
Thanks!
I think one way to do this would be to browse recent articles in some of bigger archaeology journals. The Journal of Archaeological Science, The Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and The Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory might be good starting points. Even though not every article will be relevant to your specific area of interest, scanning the tables of contents and skimming a few articles will help you get a sense of what researchers in this field do.
Then, if you find something especially interesting in one of these journals, then just follow the citation trial to see what else comes up.
I wouldn't worry about reading closely or memorizing. This should be a somewhat pleasant experience, as one way to learn more about this field.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:57 PM on May 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
Then, if you find something especially interesting in one of these journals, then just follow the citation trial to see what else comes up.
I wouldn't worry about reading closely or memorizing. This should be a somewhat pleasant experience, as one way to learn more about this field.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:57 PM on May 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
I'm a former biologist by training (don't do it actively now), and remember when I started reading journal articles and also trying to work with undergrads to get them to read articles. I don't know your particular discipline at all, but if it is like biology, it can very overwhelming for most undergrads to dive in let alone plow through a billion articles without guidance. I honestly used to have the majority of senior level students stop by and ask for help "How do I read this? I don't understand this?" etc.
Based on what you want to, here is the approach that I would suggest, but I also think that you could send off a brief email to your advisor with a 1 or 2 sentence question:
• Consider joining a journal club (you may need to ask your advisor if he knows of any for your discipline). The great thing about the journal club is you read 1 article a week; sometimes you get to read about “what’s hot in archaeology right now” or other times you will read about the research being conducted at one of the labs at your university (and as a follow-up they will tell you about their work). Often times grad students and/or faculty participate and are very enthusiastic about sharing what they know.
• You may want to read the most cited and important papers. A good tool to find these is to use google scholar; notice they tell you often it is cited—so you may want to run a search term like “Osteoarchaeology” and see what articles are cited the most. I would exclude books, and don’t go back too far in time (this may be field dependent). To be honest, you may want to ask your advisor, what are one or two of the best articles in this discipline?
• Go the about page of the faculty of your university or college. See if they list recently published articles (or plug his or her name into google scholar). If an article interests you, read it, take notes, and maybe you can ask them about the actual research in a future class or at a future time.
• Ask your advisor for the best journal of your discipline. If you were interested in medicine, I would say New England Journal of Medicine because it is very accessible, has review articles, research articles, and most of the “hot” new studies are published there. I don’t know what it is for your discipline, but once you know what it is I would suggest either subscribing to it OR going to the library and trying to read it. I would start with review articles (they provide background) for a month or two. In later months, try an original article.
In addition to this, though, if your goal is grad school, even more than reading articles, I would suggest that you get into a (lab? Field) and do research. When you read about the faculty on their web pages, if anything seems interesting ---approach him or her and ask if you can volunteer or work and do a project with them. You really want to have research under your belt before you apply to grad school, and if you are lucky, perhaps it will be published. If you do this, a lot of other things will fall into place (you will start by reading a pile of papers by that faculty member and his or her colleagues, they may have their own journal club, etc).
Upon rereading your question: I would not go looking for back issues. Start with what is being discussed in the literature right now.
posted by Wolfster at 10:02 PM on May 26, 2011 [2 favorites]
Based on what you want to, here is the approach that I would suggest, but I also think that you could send off a brief email to your advisor with a 1 or 2 sentence question:
• Consider joining a journal club (you may need to ask your advisor if he knows of any for your discipline). The great thing about the journal club is you read 1 article a week; sometimes you get to read about “what’s hot in archaeology right now” or other times you will read about the research being conducted at one of the labs at your university (and as a follow-up they will tell you about their work). Often times grad students and/or faculty participate and are very enthusiastic about sharing what they know.
• You may want to read the most cited and important papers. A good tool to find these is to use google scholar; notice they tell you often it is cited—so you may want to run a search term like “Osteoarchaeology” and see what articles are cited the most. I would exclude books, and don’t go back too far in time (this may be field dependent). To be honest, you may want to ask your advisor, what are one or two of the best articles in this discipline?
• Go the about page of the faculty of your university or college. See if they list recently published articles (or plug his or her name into google scholar). If an article interests you, read it, take notes, and maybe you can ask them about the actual research in a future class or at a future time.
• Ask your advisor for the best journal of your discipline. If you were interested in medicine, I would say New England Journal of Medicine because it is very accessible, has review articles, research articles, and most of the “hot” new studies are published there. I don’t know what it is for your discipline, but once you know what it is I would suggest either subscribing to it OR going to the library and trying to read it. I would start with review articles (they provide background) for a month or two. In later months, try an original article.
In addition to this, though, if your goal is grad school, even more than reading articles, I would suggest that you get into a (lab? Field) and do research. When you read about the faculty on their web pages, if anything seems interesting ---approach him or her and ask if you can volunteer or work and do a project with them. You really want to have research under your belt before you apply to grad school, and if you are lucky, perhaps it will be published. If you do this, a lot of other things will fall into place (you will start by reading a pile of papers by that faculty member and his or her colleagues, they may have their own journal club, etc).
Upon rereading your question: I would not go looking for back issues. Start with what is being discussed in the literature right now.
posted by Wolfster at 10:02 PM on May 26, 2011 [2 favorites]
I know nothing about archaeology, but I did this last summer as I got ready to enter my master's program. This is what worked for me: Do you have syllabi for your old classes? Go back and see if there are specific journals that keep popping up across your professors' syllabi. The ones that reappear are likely to be the most prominent journals. Pick one, then go have a look at that journal's recent archives. Don't try to read everything, just what interests you. You'll pick up on useful phrases for key-word searches for databases as you start to narrow your focus on topics. Keep an eye on footnotes and bibliographies, but don't obsess over them. Big names will pop up regularly, to the point where you'll start to recognize them. Then go see what those people have done. If you don't have any interesting leads to follow up on after the first journal, find another one and repeat. If you're well and truly lost, email your professor and ask which journal to start with. Or look and see if the journal has any awards they hand out for well-written or groundbreaking articles and go read them.
You won't know for quite awhile what's important and what's not, and that's fine. If you're really curious, run the title and author through Google Scholar to see how many other people cite its (JSTOR also has a "articles that cite this article" feature). As you leave the initial phase of "read whatever I find" and into specific inquiries you'll start to piece together what makes sense and what doesn't. But your sense of the field will develop as you go. It's fine if you read some wacko article first and don't realize it; you'll figure it out eventually.
Now, I see a couple ways to improve my process. First, focus on big-picture ideas and not on specifics within each article. I'd work on writing a one-paragraph summary of the article: what was the main argument/thesis? What was the author's claim to significance? What was the methodology? How does it connect to the other stuff I've read (content-wise and in relation to those other questions)? Even better to get that one paragraph down to a few sentences -- what it argued, why that argument is important. This is a great time to develop critical reading skills, which I sorely lacked heading into grad school. I could answer those questions, but only after spending hours poring over each article, and spending that much time was a disaster. Focus on honing those skimming and summarizing skills.
Second, don't be afraid to fall down rabbit holes. I felt overwhelmed because I gave myself impossible tasks -- read every article on X subject, or from Y bibliography, or even just read this boring article. There's no way at this stage to get an authoritative command on the field, so just read. Find an interesting citation, or see a name pop up over and over again? Go after it, even if there are ten other articles in your "to be read" folder. Every article you read is beneficial, but you won't read if you're miserable.
posted by lilac girl at 10:16 PM on May 26, 2011
You won't know for quite awhile what's important and what's not, and that's fine. If you're really curious, run the title and author through Google Scholar to see how many other people cite its (JSTOR also has a "articles that cite this article" feature). As you leave the initial phase of "read whatever I find" and into specific inquiries you'll start to piece together what makes sense and what doesn't. But your sense of the field will develop as you go. It's fine if you read some wacko article first and don't realize it; you'll figure it out eventually.
Now, I see a couple ways to improve my process. First, focus on big-picture ideas and not on specifics within each article. I'd work on writing a one-paragraph summary of the article: what was the main argument/thesis? What was the author's claim to significance? What was the methodology? How does it connect to the other stuff I've read (content-wise and in relation to those other questions)? Even better to get that one paragraph down to a few sentences -- what it argued, why that argument is important. This is a great time to develop critical reading skills, which I sorely lacked heading into grad school. I could answer those questions, but only after spending hours poring over each article, and spending that much time was a disaster. Focus on honing those skimming and summarizing skills.
Second, don't be afraid to fall down rabbit holes. I felt overwhelmed because I gave myself impossible tasks -- read every article on X subject, or from Y bibliography, or even just read this boring article. There's no way at this stage to get an authoritative command on the field, so just read. Find an interesting citation, or see a name pop up over and over again? Go after it, even if there are ten other articles in your "to be read" folder. Every article you read is beneficial, but you won't read if you're miserable.
posted by lilac girl at 10:16 PM on May 26, 2011
Best answer: I know you asked explicitly about reading articles. So I will say this: review articles will be your friend to quickly learn the current ongoings of any field.
BUT...
Getting bogged down in individual articles can be more harm than good. Especially old work. It's probably already been better summarized in a textbook you've already read or are about to read in grad school.
The important point I have here is: Do you have access to the personnel at your university? If not, the rest of this is not much use. If so, then:
DO read the work of your advisor(s) and profs of interesting classes, going back to their advisors. Try and follow the advance of learning-what did your prof's work do that was dependent upon earlier work (or was it revolutionary?). Then ask them questions about their work. (i.e., 'what made you like of that helped you choose ?")
Ask if you can attend one of their lab / group meetings. Seriously! It may be socially awkward, but you will be given every benefit of the doubt for trying, even if you are not understanding things, and you'll get much more out of it than you'll ever get from trying to read papers in the library alone.
Those faculty/classmates, etc. that are receptive, be happy to go out with them and fill them with beer and snacks at every opportunity. These guys and gals should love to talk about what they do, what the others in your field are doing, and the impacts of what they are doing. And having them describe all that to you, an undergrad, will make it all much easier to understand. (not that you'd not understand them in the context of primary research articles, but...well they are lots easier to understand when you can sit there and ask questions rather than re-read a paragraph designed to be as concise as earthly possible!)
You will find yourself over your head quickly, but these conversations will be full of a lot more useful info than just reading papers. It is much easier to listen to a discussion which you do not understand, then ask questions in a social setting, rather than trying to guess at it just by reading.
They will be mostly happy to talk (and talk and talk) about their work, and how it interacts with the field overall.
And then you will have lots of USEFUL leads to chase down.
I know, I took this in a different direction. But I've spent a lot of time in the library getting a lot less useful information than what was gained over a few lunches. And I've spent a lot of lunches with people who had only been in the library. Get lots of human perspective. It's similar to all of the non-supernerd fields in that way.
posted by joemax at 10:43 PM on May 26, 2011
BUT...
Getting bogged down in individual articles can be more harm than good. Especially old work. It's probably already been better summarized in a textbook you've already read or are about to read in grad school.
The important point I have here is: Do you have access to the personnel at your university? If not, the rest of this is not much use. If so, then:
DO read the work of your advisor(s) and profs of interesting classes, going back to their advisors. Try and follow the advance of learning-what did your prof's work do that was dependent upon earlier work (or was it revolutionary?). Then ask them questions about their work. (i.e., 'what made you like
Ask if you can attend one of their lab / group meetings. Seriously! It may be socially awkward, but you will be given every benefit of the doubt for trying, even if you are not understanding things, and you'll get much more out of it than you'll ever get from trying to read papers in the library alone.
Those faculty/classmates, etc. that are receptive, be happy to go out with them and fill them with beer and snacks at every opportunity. These guys and gals should love to talk about what they do, what the others in your field are doing, and the impacts of what they are doing. And having them describe all that to you, an undergrad, will make it all much easier to understand. (not that you'd not understand them in the context of primary research articles, but...well they are lots easier to understand when you can sit there and ask questions rather than re-read a paragraph designed to be as concise as earthly possible!)
You will find yourself over your head quickly, but these conversations will be full of a lot more useful info than just reading papers. It is much easier to listen to a discussion which you do not understand, then ask questions in a social setting, rather than trying to guess at it just by reading.
They will be mostly happy to talk (and talk and talk) about their work, and how it interacts with the field overall.
And then you will have lots of USEFUL leads to chase down.
I know, I took this in a different direction. But I've spent a lot of time in the library getting a lot less useful information than what was gained over a few lunches. And I've spent a lot of lunches with people who had only been in the library. Get lots of human perspective. It's similar to all of the non-supernerd fields in that way.
posted by joemax at 10:43 PM on May 26, 2011
EDIT:
(i.e., 'what made you like of that helped you choose ?")
is a mess. I had used some brackets that didn't format.
I was trying to get the idea across that your professors did work when they were in grad school that pushed them to do the work they are currently doing. By reading their work, and the work of their teachers, then you could create a question that asked what led them down that path.
posted by joemax at 10:54 PM on May 26, 2011
(i.e., 'what made you like of that helped you choose ?")
is a mess. I had used some brackets that didn't format.
I was trying to get the idea across that your professors did work when they were in grad school that pushed them to do the work they are currently doing. By reading their work, and the work of their teachers, then you could create a question that asked what led them down that path.
posted by joemax at 10:54 PM on May 26, 2011
Might I recomend you begin http://research.amnh.org/anthropology/research/mca? Seems like a good starting point as any.
posted by gradvmedusa at 11:45 PM on May 26, 2011
posted by gradvmedusa at 11:45 PM on May 26, 2011
I don't know about Archaeology, but in Chemistry I just set up a RSS feed from the popular journals and read the ones that catch my fancy. Very easy to do with google reader and essentially painless. Couldn't you subscribe to a RSS feed of (totally making these names up)
The American society of Archaeology.
Antiquities.
The Royal Society of Archaeology.
Digging.
Tales from the Pliocene.
Metal Detecting Letters.
You get the drift. Ask your prof for four or five journals that are considered good and just read what catches your eye. If you don't understand a concept then pull the referenced paper and eventually you will be all read up on what interests you. It just takes time and good on you for starting this early.
posted by koolkat at 1:51 AM on May 27, 2011
The American society of Archaeology.
Antiquities.
The Royal Society of Archaeology.
Digging.
Tales from the Pliocene.
Metal Detecting Letters.
You get the drift. Ask your prof for four or five journals that are considered good and just read what catches your eye. If you don't understand a concept then pull the referenced paper and eventually you will be all read up on what interests you. It just takes time and good on you for starting this early.
posted by koolkat at 1:51 AM on May 27, 2011
Just wanted to add an additional bit of information: the journals I mentioned above, The Journal of Archaeological Science, The Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and The Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, are some of the top journals in the field according to one report I ran (I'm a librarian). But koolkat is right: ask your prof for the top journals in your field (which you've probably already consulted to some extent as an undergrad), and browse those.
Also regarding books and publication dates: in anthropology/archaeology, information doesn't get outdates as fast as in a field like biology. So something a few years old is likely still highly relevant.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:12 AM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
Also regarding books and publication dates: in anthropology/archaeology, information doesn't get outdates as fast as in a field like biology. So something a few years old is likely still highly relevant.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:12 AM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
If you get to the point where you have a couple of interesting articles and would like to start following various threads, I really like the Web of Knowledge database (available at lots of university libraries, hopefully at yours!) It's a quick way of seeing both what articles were cited in a paper, and also what articles *cited* the paper, and also what other papers a particular author has written. Do a few of those, up and down the chain, and you're likely to find a few of the widely-cited, seminal papers in your subfield.
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:20 AM on May 27, 2011
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:20 AM on May 27, 2011
Best answer: I am an archaeologist and a professor. Your question is an admirable one. Not all students think of doing this. First of all, realize that when you do go to grad school, you will get a good foundation in the literature, especially the history of the field. You don't have to sweat learning that because you will have a guide for it before too long.
What you should do now is mostly read to get a sense of recent directions in the field: What kinds of problems and techniques are being used and discussed? What are the problems people are interested in?
Of all the comments here, I would most second bluedaisy's. There are several journals that are top-tier journals. Just skim their Table of Contents and pick out interesting sounding works. Don't worry about reading every word of every article you peek at. Some you may just read the Abstract. Some you may just add the Conclusion. Some you may add the Introduction. And others you may read whole. You can also do keyword searches. I recommend using the Anthropology Plus index if your school has access. In archaeology "recent" usually means something in the last 10 years or so (in some of the sciences 10 years ago is ancient).
As for top-tier journals, I would include American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Journal of Archaeological Research, and Current Anthropology.
There are also method-specific journals which would relate to your methodological interests. These include Journal of Archaeological Science, Archaeometry, Geoarchaeology (and others). Some of the articles in these journals can be science-y and dense and difficult to read unless you have the technical background, however.
Finally, if you are going to invest the time I might also recommend reading up on the region you are interested in. Probably the best way to do that is through recent books. There are a bunch of books on Mesoamerica such as Hendon and Joyce's Mesoamerican Archaeology, Evans Ancient Mexico, Smith's Aztecs, etc. I am not a Mesoamericanist, so there may be some other good recent ones too. These tend to give a bigger-picture perspective that you rarely get in a journal article, and help you contextualize the other discussions you read.
Finally, as an aside, I wish the advice above to look at citation counts in Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar was useful in archaeology. Unfortunately at the moment, it is not especially valuable. Too few archaeological journals are being indexed and a significant portion of archaeological knowledge is published in books, edited volumes, and reports which are currently not used by those tools.
posted by Tallguy at 6:17 AM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
What you should do now is mostly read to get a sense of recent directions in the field: What kinds of problems and techniques are being used and discussed? What are the problems people are interested in?
Of all the comments here, I would most second bluedaisy's. There are several journals that are top-tier journals. Just skim their Table of Contents and pick out interesting sounding works. Don't worry about reading every word of every article you peek at. Some you may just read the Abstract. Some you may just add the Conclusion. Some you may add the Introduction. And others you may read whole. You can also do keyword searches. I recommend using the Anthropology Plus index if your school has access. In archaeology "recent" usually means something in the last 10 years or so (in some of the sciences 10 years ago is ancient).
As for top-tier journals, I would include American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Journal of Archaeological Research, and Current Anthropology.
There are also method-specific journals which would relate to your methodological interests. These include Journal of Archaeological Science, Archaeometry, Geoarchaeology (and others). Some of the articles in these journals can be science-y and dense and difficult to read unless you have the technical background, however.
Finally, if you are going to invest the time I might also recommend reading up on the region you are interested in. Probably the best way to do that is through recent books. There are a bunch of books on Mesoamerica such as Hendon and Joyce's Mesoamerican Archaeology, Evans Ancient Mexico, Smith's Aztecs, etc. I am not a Mesoamericanist, so there may be some other good recent ones too. These tend to give a bigger-picture perspective that you rarely get in a journal article, and help you contextualize the other discussions you read.
Finally, as an aside, I wish the advice above to look at citation counts in Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar was useful in archaeology. Unfortunately at the moment, it is not especially valuable. Too few archaeological journals are being indexed and a significant portion of archaeological knowledge is published in books, edited volumes, and reports which are currently not used by those tools.
posted by Tallguy at 6:17 AM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
For seminal articles, look back at your textbooks and see what they cite. At least in psychology, most textbooks cite important studies on the text and give a list of articles at the end of a chapter. It's cool to not just know that Bloggs was behind important theory X, but also read the series of articles where he crafted his ideas.
posted by MadamM at 6:27 AM on May 27, 2011
posted by MadamM at 6:27 AM on May 27, 2011
I'm also not from your field but if you still have access to your library - then you should also have access to a librarian familiar with research in your field. Find this person and they should be able to help you find something that works.
My first thought was to get Table of Content alerts (email or RSS) from the big journals in your field which are available directly from journals. The librarian at your school should know about any other tools that would be useful - maybe they subscribe to a archaeology article database or know some good academic blogs on the topic.
posted by Gor-ella at 8:52 AM on May 27, 2011
My first thought was to get Table of Content alerts (email or RSS) from the big journals in your field which are available directly from journals. The librarian at your school should know about any other tools that would be useful - maybe they subscribe to a archaeology article database or know some good academic blogs on the topic.
posted by Gor-ella at 8:52 AM on May 27, 2011
Tallguy has it. I'm just sort of echoing him here. What I found useful when I felt out of the loop was to grab five or six of the most recent edited volumes that focused on my areas of interest. The introductory chapter of each volume will lay out for you the contours of the debate that this volume hopes to contribute to. Figure out who the big names are that the contributors seem to want to be in dialogue with. Go look for THOSE people's work.
Review articles are also hugely helpful for this same purpose.
As somebody mentioned above, field school is a must before you enter any graduate program in archaeology. Some field schools are better than others in terms of hands-on experience. I witnessed a field school last summer that was basically a guided-tour-vacation-with-dabblings-in-fieldwork. Make sure you don't go to one of those.
I know a couple of people who ended up in programs after figuring out which programs would be their top choices - and then making sure they went to a field school run by a prof in one of those programs. It gave them a leg up, no doubt...
posted by artemisia at 9:23 AM on May 27, 2011
Review articles are also hugely helpful for this same purpose.
As somebody mentioned above, field school is a must before you enter any graduate program in archaeology. Some field schools are better than others in terms of hands-on experience. I witnessed a field school last summer that was basically a guided-tour-vacation-with-dabblings-in-fieldwork. Make sure you don't go to one of those.
I know a couple of people who ended up in programs after figuring out which programs would be their top choices - and then making sure they went to a field school run by a prof in one of those programs. It gave them a leg up, no doubt...
posted by artemisia at 9:23 AM on May 27, 2011
Are there summer research opportunities you might be taking advantage of in the future? If so, I throw my vote in with Wolfster & Joemax that you should concentrate on articles by folks on campus in your field, with the goal of figuring out whose work most interests you, and approaching them regarding some kind of undergraduate research opportunity.
posted by deludingmyself at 9:24 AM on May 27, 2011
posted by deludingmyself at 9:24 AM on May 27, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks for all the answers! They are really helpful and it's easier to get started knowing what to look for.
I am about to start summer research with a professor I've been working for this year and I'm going to a short field school this summer for archaeological sciences and a semester-long one in Guatemala next year. I've been reading up on both sites and I'm definitely going to keep doing that.
posted by raeka at 4:19 PM on May 27, 2011
I am about to start summer research with a professor I've been working for this year and I'm going to a short field school this summer for archaeological sciences and a semester-long one in Guatemala next year. I've been reading up on both sites and I'm definitely going to keep doing that.
posted by raeka at 4:19 PM on May 27, 2011
You've gotten lots of great suggestions in this thread! I'll nth the advice to not get too bogged down in individual articles, but focus on the journal ToC, abstract, conclusion unless the article really moves you.
Also, if your library subscribes to Annual Reviews, they are a great source of overviews of the field. This one includes archaeology. The whole point of these journals is to summarize new research in the field, so I recommend them to a lot of grad students starting out. Good on you for being motivated enough to take a look as an undergrad!
posted by lillygog at 11:11 AM on May 28, 2011
Also, if your library subscribes to Annual Reviews, they are a great source of overviews of the field. This one includes archaeology. The whole point of these journals is to summarize new research in the field, so I recommend them to a lot of grad students starting out. Good on you for being motivated enough to take a look as an undergrad!
posted by lillygog at 11:11 AM on May 28, 2011
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posted by gypseefire at 9:48 PM on May 26, 2011