Anthropology and Geography Labs
Anthropology, archaeology, and geography students conduct research in specialized labs located in Lindquist Hall.
Archaeology Lab
The Archaeology Lab provides training in the essential skills needed for a career in archaeology — whether in the private sector, a government agency, or academia. In the lab, students analyze and interpret what they find from Weber State's annual archaeological field school, gaining direct experience with the entire research process.
The lab features teaching collections in lithics, ceramics, and faunal bone from the American Great Basin and Southwest, many of which are available for student research.
A dedicated curation and photography space gives students training in professional documentation and preservation techniques, while a long-term storage area ensures the ongoing care of the lab's collections of artifacts from around the world.
Biological Anthropology Lab
The Biological Anthropology Laboratory serves as a specialized facility for skeletal analysis, providing students with the tactile experience necessary for osteological, forensic, and archaeological work.
The lab houses an extensive collection, ranging from real human skeletal remains and high-quality human casts to animal bones for comparative anatomy and primate skull casts for evolutionary studies.
It also features a comprehensive series of hominin fossil casts that allow students to trace morphological changes across millions of years of human history. As a foundational resource for the anthropology program, the lab facilitates immersive instruction in advanced coursework such as human osteology, forensic anthropology, and paleopathology.
By engaging directly with these materials, students master the diagnostic techniques required to interpret trauma, pathology, and identifying characteristics in both ancient and modern contexts.
Paleoenvironmental Lab
The Paleoenvironmental Lab is a dynamic interdisciplinary research and teaching space dedicated to reconstructing past environments and landscape histories. The lab has specialized workstations for soil, sediment, charcoal, and paleozoological analyses, and curated environmental collections.
Students get immersive training in sediment characterization, geochemical techniques, archaeological sampling strategies, and paleoenvironment interpretation, and learn essential analytic skills for careers in environmental research and heritage preservation.
The lab features a muffle furnace used to determine percent organic content, moisture content, and mineral composition of soils and sediments, and an X‑Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyzer for measuring elemental concentrations.
These tools allow lab members to reconstruct environmental change, identify geochemical signatures, and track landscape dynamics through time.
Additionally, charcoal analysis tools enable students and researchers to examine fire histories through microscopic identification and quantification of burned plant material. The lab also plays a key role in identifying small-mammal fossil remains recovered from archaeological and paleontological sites across the Great Basin.
GIS Lab
The shared GIS/Criminal Justice Lab provides students with computing resources to use everyday GIS software.
The lab desktop machines are equipped with ESRI's ARCGIS PRO, ENVI's Remote Sensing software suite, and a Python Integrated Development Environment. The desktop workstations also provide students with large monitors and ample processing capabilities.
While primarily serving as a place where students can access the 20 workstation machines to complete lab assignments, the room also functions as a classroom that can seat 20 students with full workstations and an instructor podium with projector, screen, and whiteboard.
The lab space is centrally located next to the Geography main office on the third floor of Lindquist Hall, and is accessible to students taking GIS classes by tapping their Wildcards.