Mad Hatter |

  

 

 

A Douglas College Newslette

  

pOUGLAS COLLEGE

ARCHIVES
a.

April 10, 19865

 

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ANTHROPOLOGY

The first misconception most people have about anthropology is what Alan McMillan calls

the 'Raiders of the Lost Ark syndrome'.

"You know, sunken cities and buried treasures," says the anthropology instructor at
Douglas College. "Sure there is some excitement to the work, but mostly it's collecting

and preparing data."

McMillan should know. Besides teaching at both the New Westminster and Maple Ridge
campuses of Douglas College, he has been involved in several archeological searches in

British Columbia.

"| guess it started when | was a kid growing up on the Saskatchewan plains collecting

Indian arrowheads and odd-shaped rocks," he says.

Once he was old enough to go to university, McMillan even turned his back on anthro-

pology to study the 'real sciences', such as calculus, physics and chemistry.

"But in my second year | came back to my first love - prehistoric archeology, one of

the three main branches of anthropology."

The science of anthropology is described best as the study of everything to do with

people: their customs, their religions, their race, their past and their future.