Anthropology Degree

Hi, I'm doing Anthropology and Archaeology at Bristol so I can tell you a bit about that. For straight anthropology, you will be doing a lot of social anthropology, but also will have the options to study biological anth, or more archaeological studies, later on in the degree. In the first year we got a mix of social anthropology, applied anthropology and evolutionary anthropology, as well as archaeology as well since I'm doing joint, but some archaeological units are also available as an option to straight Anth students. I think if you're not sure try looking at the course structure for all of the courses you have applied to, to see which units you'd like to choose and what those units consist of in terms of subject matter and how they're assessed. This can be a good way to decide what you want to do. If you have any more questions about Bristol, I'm happy to answer them

Which specific course(s) did you apply to at each of those universities? UCL for example has Social Anthropology, Arch & Anth, and Human Sciences, which all have slightly different emphases in course content (although a fair bit of overlap as well).

Exeter does have some emphasis on the physical/biological anthropology to my understanding (we had some of our EE lectures in their department, they definitely have a lot of skulls and stuff lying around). UCL obviously a lot of biological anthropology and human sciences related options, seeing as they're one of the few universities in the country with a human sciences degree. I know Durham has arch & anth but I don't know to what extent it involves the biological anthropology and archaeological science aspects (I imagine there should be at least some options, and they may well be patterned after Oxford's course which is essentially a tripartite degree between archaeology, social anthropology, and biological anthropology).

I'd suggest you go through the module/paper offerings for each course and read through any syllabuses (or reading lists, if possible!) to get an idea of how much you can tailor the course to your interests in that area, and how much the course lies in that realm to begin with (before choosing options).

Thank you so much! This is really really useful. Wow looking at the units in particular I think I might be more interested into archeology than I first thought as it looks as though it involves more of the science. I think I might email the unis to see their flexibility about changing to anth and arc. Again, thank you so much!