Research Facilities

Archaeological Research Unit (ARU)
This branch of the Department provides students with a broad range of educational and employment opportunities in archaeological fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and report preparation. The ARU is undergoing a major expansion in operations and will continue to be among the most important sources of support for anthropology graduate students.

Eastern Information Center (EIC)
One of eleven regional centers in the California Historical Resources Information System, the EIC houses and manages cultural resource records and reports for thousands of sites in three counties of eastern California. Students are offered experience in information systems management, and service requests of the EIC provide regular and part-time employee positions.

Archaeological Curation Unit (ACU)
The prime mission of the ACU is to serve as a repository and research center for prehistoric and historic archaeological collections from California, the Great Basin, and adjacent areas of southwestern North America. Collections held at the ACU are housed in a facility meeting all federal regulations and state guidelines for archaeological repositories and which possess the capacity to curate collections of any size.

Archaeology Laboratories
The facilities contain equipment for a broad range of procedures including microscopic analysis of artifacts, flotation recovery of plant remains, and artifact photography. Teaching type collections include prehistoric and historic artifacts, and artifact casts, lithic tool reproductions, and botanical reference collections. A photographic darkroom is available for research and equipped for development and enlargement.

Lithic Technology Laboratory
The Lithic Technology Laboratory (www.anthropology.ucr.edu/lithic/index.html) provides facilities, equipment, and materials for use by faculty, research staff, and students in the study of ancient stone technologies. It houses a substantial collection of literature, extensive replicated research collections in many technological areas, voucher collections of tool-stone samples from around the world and from many heat-treatment experiments, comparative collections from critically important archaeological sites of the Near Eastern Neolithic and Paleolithic, heat-treatment kilns, microscopes, photographic and ultraviolet fluorescence equipment, raw materials for stoneworking, and other necessities for the replicative analysis and interpretation of archaeological lithic collections.

BioAnthropology Laboratory
Materials for teaching and research include equipment to evaluate human fertility, nutrition, and growth; human and non-human osteological collections; and a wide range of fossil replicas representing Miocene through recent hominid evolution.

Computer Laboratory
Outfitted for student use with IBM-compatible microcomputers, printers, and programs for word processing, data base management, statistics, and exploratory data analysis including Systat and S-Plus. Also available is direct access to e-mail and the World Wide Web, as well as connections to the UCR ALPHA system and the San Diego Supercomputer Center, providing major communication and computational capabilities. The Anthropology department also contains a Sun Workstation used primarily to run a Geographic Information System (GIS) utilizing ARC/INFO software. The lab is available for Anthropology student use only and can be accessed by a key available in the department office.

Mixtec Database
Available for research and teaching, this database consists of published and manuscript materials, videos, and ephemera on contemporary Mixtec society, culture, language, migration, and politics, as well as a directory of Mixtec scholars and organizations.

Pacific Rim Research Unit (PRRU)
Pacific Rim Research Unit was established to coordinate a variety of anthropological and archaeological research interests throughout the Pacific Rim. The Pacific, including portions of Southeast Asia, are areas of increasing interest to researchers in many fields, including anthropologists and archaeologists, particularly as current, ongoing research sheds new light on a portion of the human story rich in information but long neglected in the west.