Many of the world’s great ancient civilizations flourished on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea: the Egyptians, the Minoans and Mycenaeans, the Greeks and Romans, just to name a few. In this course, we will focus on the ways that archaeologists recover and interpret the material traces of the past, working alongside natural scientists, historians and art historians, epigraphers and philologists, and many others. Archaeological sites and themes from over 2000 years of Mediterranean history will be presented. This course is a non-technical introduction that assumes no prior knowledge of archaeology.