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ANTH 335 Archaeology of North America

Key points related to the course assignment

  • in paragraph or bullet point form
  • 6 or more academic sources
  • complete bibliographic information for each source in correct Chicago Manual of Style format
  • briefly describe author's topic and thesis
  • provide notes on the utility of the source for research paper, i.e. how useful was it for the investigation of your topic?
  • example of possible questions to address: did the source help you understand the topic? what additional information might have been useful? how did the source compare to others used? what did you like best or least about the source? do you agree or disagree with what the author's thesis?
  • grammatically correct and easily formatted for each reading

Annotated Bibliographies

Types of annotations:
Summary (indicative and informative -- for details, see link above.)

  • They sum up the content of the source, as a book report might.
  • They give an overview of the arguments and proofs/evidence addressed in the work and note the resulting conclusion.
  • They do not judge the work they are discussing. Leave that to the critical/evaluative annotations.
  • When appropriate, they describe the author’s methodology or approach to material. For instance, you might mention if the source is an ethnography or if the author employs a particular kind of theory.

Critical/evaluative

Evaluative annotations don’t just summarize. In addition to tackling the points addressed in summary annotations, evaluative annotations:

  • evaluate the source or author critically (biases, lack of evidence, objective, etc.).
  • show how the work may or may not be useful for a particular field of study or audience.
  • explain how researching this material assisted your own project.

*** Combination -- for this assignment -- a little summarizing and a lot of evaluation

An annotated bibliography may combine elements of all the types. In fact, most of them fall into this category: a little summarizing and describing, a little evaluation.

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