This was a excellent course on the archaeology of Lower Central America. It covers the archaeology of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. It starts from the middle Pleistocene and ends at around 1500 A.D. It also covers topics such as paleo-Indian lithic technology and subsistence, and includes various culture areas and early material culture. Just keep in mind this course does not cover Mayan archaeology! Your grade consist of five quizzes, a midterm, and final exam. All quizzes were short written answers identifying material culture or identifying geographic points on a map. The midterm and final consisted of 20 questions each. Some questions on the exams were mix and match, others were short and long essay answers. To be honest the exams were not difficult if you did the readings and went to lecture. Plus he did provide study guides! Just keep in mind that he does assign a ton of reading the first 5 weeks. At times I became frustrated because we had over 100 pages of reading a week before midterms, ugh. It was tough for me because I had to grind while taking 4 courses this quarter; but it’s totally doable if you’re taking 3 classes. Also, Dr. Wake only answered 1 out of 3 emails I sent him and he didn’t give us our midterm grades until week 10! The latter due to some administrative departmental issues with acquiring a grader for our exams. I’m sure that’s not his usual grading routine, but nonetheless nerve racking. Other than that he was a excellent professor that is very insightful about archaeology and I would definitely recommend this class!

Archaeology of Lower Central America

This class was fun and easy. Every week he gave a 10pt quiz, but often times the quiz was just signing in to make sure you were there.
You have to memorize a lot of geography and dates and things — tests are memorization based. But I found that pretty doable.
The grade is based on those quizzes, midterm, final and a final research paper on a topic of your choice.
Professor Wake has a sort of dry humor I enjoyed and he’s really great in his field, I liked hearing about his experiences in Central America.
Overall I recommend.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF EXTINCTION 118
Honestly, I love Dr. Wake as a person. His stories and anecdotes are great and he is definitely passionate about his field of study, but I would NOT recommend his course unless you are a fan of taxonomy and geography. There are map quizzes and taxon quizzes, which really have nothing to do with the lectures. You are expected to anticipate the Genus and Species names that will be on the quizzes as well as the countries, not from a study guide or lectures, but from the readings. Though I went to his office hours and asked for pointers repeatedly, he was not willing to give any direction at all. That being said, the study guide for the midterm was very helpful and so was the one for the final. I think Dr. Wake is a great professor, but he is not willing to go above and beyond for his students like some other professors I've had at UCLA. He only offered extra credit after the class repeatedly begged for it because most people got low scores on the quizzes, around 40-50%.
Going to class and keeping up with the readings is essential.

ARCH OF EXTINCTION - You will be memorizing over 150 scientific species names and the location of multiple countries, ecosystems, and other important places. You won't have a lot of notice for what to focus on. It's a lot of work for one class. If you have any interest in zooarchaeology, the megafauna of the Pleistocene, animal conservation, etc... you will be able to make this class interesting for yourself with some effort. It's just a lot of material, and he isn't the most accessible professor. He never answered emails from me or my classmates. He is very helpful in office hours though. He also does offer extra credit and he does give study guides, which is great!