I took Anthro 8 with Professor Schachner the first quarter of my freshman year, and to this day he is still the best professor I have encountered at UCLA. I have taken Archaeology courses with other professors at UCLA and no one else compares. Schachner's class is very straight-forward and is very manageable if you invest a little bit of time into the class. Not the easiest class, but as a science major this class was nothing. Honestly, I feel the reading is unnecessary if you really pay attention in lecture, participate in discussion, and review before the exams. Schachner is a verrrrrrrry fair grader and makes sure you are successful in his class. He wants the class averages to be high and is very accommodating as long as you show effort. He is one of the best lecturer's on campus and really knows his stuff. All of his lecture presentations are available online so I suggest only copying what he says in class. And his exams are definitely lecture driven. He is very effective at making a arguably dull subject interesting and even makes his lectures humorous. I am very glad to have taken a class with Schachner and I definitely plan on taking a class with him again!

I took Anthro 8 and I soon learned that I am NOT a fan of studying archaeology. It's definitely really boring and not as interesting as I thought it would be. I had a hard time paying attention in class and retaining any information whatsoever. I didn't read the book, but I studied pretty hard for the midterm and final and got B/B+'s.
I had Stephanie as a TA and she was really cool. I got A's on the papers, though they were really challenging. I ended up with a B because the final killed me, but other people said they studied the slides and did really well.
It was nice that he put the slides and podcast online, too.
Overall, he was a really good lecturer but way too boring and monotone for my taste, mainly due to the subject matter.

His grading is horrible.

His class was set up to have two papers, one midterm and one final. I guess my one complaint was that the midterm and final were all multiple choice, which I feel is an insufficient method of testing period. He tries to make his lectures a little funny with his dry humor. Good TA's helped a lot with writing the papers and studying for the exams. Overall, an alright professor. Nothing especially good, but he also wasn't bad at all.

One of the best teachers I ever had. Tests are easy if you study. All the material is online. And the papers are easy, as long as you get your TAs to revise them. Great class and I hate anthropology, I took it as a GE.

Good professor, good class for a GE. Selling my Human Past textbook really cheap: $20. Text me at **********

In the most recent review, I meant to put Winter 2015, and my overall grade was an A.

His class, "The Politics of Past" has been one of my favorite classes at UCLA so far. If you think you are considering a profession in archaeology, this class is a must.

Not only did I learn a lot about museums, collecting, NAGPRA, etc., but you learn so much about how archaeology really gets done -- and how so much of the field really isn't about just the science of it.

This class has a decent amount of reading each week, but its not too dry. Class is structured as a "seminar" of sorts. Generally, Professor Schachner lectures or shares stories for part of the class. Then the class usually breaks up into groups to discuss, or there is just a general class discussion. Overall, class wasn't too boring, and was sometimes pretty entertaining.

Your grade in the class is based off of participation, a take home midterm, a museum project, and a final paper. None of these were overly difficult.

The Professor always responded to my e-mails in a timely manner, even on Saturdays, and gave great feedback on papers. He cares a lot about writing, and that shows in his grading. However, he recognizes hard work and improvement.

I got an A in his class and I definitely recommend this class to others!

One of the best professors I've had at UCLA. He's very articulate and does a good job of presenting technical, somewhat abstract concepts in ways that are easy to understand. You won't be able to slack off, but it's definitely not the hardest class I've taken. I took Anthro 8 and 110P.

Readings: Readings aren't super necessary, especially in Anthro 8. A bit more so in 110P, but I skimmed the chapters and got an A.

Tests: I had to make up my midterm and final due to scheduling conflicts in Anthro 8 and he was very understanding and flexible. Tests in Anthro 8 are multiple choice, in 110P they are essay based and very fair. He gives you a list of review questions, and the ones on the actual tests are very similar, if not the same. He'll give you a list of 6-7 and you have to pick 4 or so to write, so you do have some choice. He's more concerned with general concepts rather than specifics, so you don't need to waste time memorizing sites.

Other assignments: He gives a few short (ie. 1 page) papers in 110P and drops the lowest grade. You definitely have to think about the material, but it's not too hard to get to the main idea.

Let me start by saying that I am a south campus science major. For me, this class was beyond boring. Perhaps it was the material, perhaps it was the professor - in all honesty it was most likely a combination. I think Professor Schachner definitely could have done a better job with his lectures. I walked out everyday not knowing what the hell I had just listened to for 50 minutes. He is very monotone...very little excitement at all... which made it hard for me to pay attention. He also has a little habit of walking down the aisles while he is lecturing which really annoyed me for some reason.

I do however like that he posts his powerpoint slides online. Alot of people take advantage of this and skip lecture...I personally still went to every lecture (only missed one), although in hindsight I think I probably could have done okay if I just showed up for the midterm and final. He also posts readings online, but I didn't do any of them...and I got an A. So save yourself the time, because the book goes into way too much detail about things you will never get tested on. You can probably get away with not buying the book because there is a website for the book that has really detailed chapter summaries - I found this site really helpful for studying, although it can also go into too much detail.

Grade is based on midterm (50 questions mult choice), final (75 questions mult choice), 2 five page papers, and participation. Papers were quite time consuming, but the mean and median were about 90 for both.

I personally thought the tests in this class were frustrating. First of all, they were really hard to study for because it was nearly impossible to predict what exactly we needed to know. There were tons of dates, places, and other random things to memorize. And the professor was always really vague when telling us what to study. In fact he was actually misleading because he would say not to focus on specific details, but then alot of questions on the tests were related to little things that he maybe brushed over for a minute during lecture. TA's didn't really help either. If I had to give some advice to someone taking the class, I'd say memorize the powerpoint slides and also look up all the sites that he has pictures of on the slides and have a good understanding of those.

Alot of the time I felt like I was in a history class, not an archaeology class. That was my main beef with this course, and I'm not sure if the blame goes to the professor or the department. You would think you'd be learning how archaeologists relate pottery, etc. to sites and how they make general conclusions based on their findings. But instead we were trying to remember if the people in Mesoamerica were cultivating corn or tomatoes in 5000BC. /end rant