Really hated this class. Considering how cool the subject is, she does it no justice.

She was awful. Terrible lecturer. She would skip over very text-heavy slides, yet leave up for 20 minutes slides with only photos. She failed to bring archaeology alive.

Discussions are interesting--go to them (plus attendance counts toward your grade)! Class itself involves a lot of rote memorization. Do well on your first midterm and it'll help balance out the harder second midterm.

Only take this class if you are willing to teach yourself the material. The information tested comes straight from the book and her lectures give almost no supplemental material. Her lectures are never coherent and she asks you to know very minute details. She seems very knowledgeable, but she does not know how to communicate that in a classroom setting.

This class is awful. Laviolette clearly likes archaeology but is not good at talking about stuff that's relevant to anything. The lectures are in slide format, but she posts the powerpoints online and they're not helpful at all. Almost all material for the midterm comes from READING THE TEXTBOOK. The discussions help a lot, too. Erika does a good job at giving organized notes (unlike the lecture notes) and explaining concepts well. This class is tedious tedious tedious. Take a history class instead if you want to learn about Stonehenge...

Erika's amazing as a TA but overall this class is pretty dry. Don't bother going to the lectures--as long as you do the reading you should get a decent grade.

Would not recommend this class. Archaeology is boring at best, and her lectures are rambling with slides. Picky grader.

She is a terrible professor and you don't learn about Archaeology, you learn mainly about history. the exams are unnecessarily difficult and it is hard to get a good grade. DO NOT TAKE!!

The class really isnt that bad. She basically tells you what you need to know on her study guides, and as long as you do the textbook readings/other ones (even if its the night before) you'll be able to pull off a good grade. Make sure to read the two books she assigns at the end of the semester. Lectures can be pointless, a lot of people either didnt go or were just on facebook, but make sure you go through the power points on collab.

NO NO NO NO NO. Do not take this class. I assumed an intro to archaeology class would be fairly simple and straightforward but this class turned out to be the bane of my existence for the entire semester. The first midterm is easy and LaViolette actually emphasizes the important things so you had an idea of what the short answers would be but the true/false is still tricky. The second midterm, on the other hand, was AWFUL - the time range was enormous, her lectures went downhill and mostly consisted of pictures of pots and other artifacts that were not applicable to the exam whatsoever, and she did not emphasize anything in particular. She expected us to know completely irrelevant and obscure facts. The textbook is close to useless, and literally the LAST week of class she assigned us 2 books to read, both of which were the least educational books I've ever read for a class. One was just stories about a South African archaeologist and the other - I don't even know what it was about. The final seemed like it wouldn't be so bad because she gave us the essays ahead of time, but we had no choice on the essays for the final and she chose the hardest ones by FAR for the final, and she knew that many people hadn't had a chance to read the books or watch the movie she played on the DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING BREAK. The short answers on this final were also incredibly random and specific. She seemed to forget it was an intro class and didn't give clear lectures to make the information concise and easy to understand - she mostly rambled about her own experiences. Unless you need this class for some reason, choose a different intro anthropology class.