Join the Lab

Undergraduate Students

If you are an undergraduate student seeking hands-on research experience, our lab may be a great fit, especially if you are interested in archaeology. This year Dr. Ebert is leading the 2025-2026 Center for Comparative Archaeology Gateways Project for the Mesoamerican Cities Database. How and why do cities rise, thrive, or fall? This year’s Gateways Project explores these questions by contributing to a database on ancient Mesoamerican cities to reveal how ancient urban centers were sustained—and what we can learn from them today. This project is part of URBank, an international initiative transforming how we study cities across 5,500 years of human (pre)history. Working as a team on a faculty research project, supervised by a graduate student GSA, undergraduate students in Anthropology will:

• Gather archaeological, historical, and environmental data from published sources

• Use GIS to digitize ancient city plans and map infrastructure

• Help build a dynamic database for comparative urban analysis

• Present their work and their results at the Archaeology Research Fair in the spring term

Interns should be careful workers who pay attention to detail, as that will be essential to database accuracy. Organizational abilities are also very important. No previous experience with archaeological materials is necessary, but some experience with Microsoft Excel and GIS is preferred. Students must be able to commit to a minimum of 6-10 hours per week during the semester.

Please fill out the following Internship Application if you are intersted in this project.

You can also contact Dr. Ebert via email c.ebert@pitt.edu to introduce yourself and to receive more information.