ANTH 224G: The Rise and Fall of the Maya - Sullivan

Your topic will help determine where to search.

1) If you topic is BROAD, Mayan Art for example, use small databases. Anthropology Plus is a good place to start.

2) If your topic is very NARROW, for example, the female goddesses in Teotihuacan, use a large database like JSTOR or Google Scholar.

3) If your topic is somewhere in the middle or you aren't sure, start with JSTOR. It is a large database but you can narrow your search to specific subject areas, such as Anthropology, Archaeology and Latin American Studies.

There are a few search strategies which will work in most databases.

1) Use an asterisk (*) at the end of a word or part of a word to retrieve variations.

• For example, religi* will find the words religion, religions, and religious.

2) Use "quotation marks" to search for a phrase, such as "human sacrifice". This will limit the number of results you receive. It is particularly useful in JSTOR and Google Scholar.

Using AND, OR and NOT

AND - narrows a search; Use to combine key concepts, for example: Maya AND sports

OR - broadens a search; Use to add concepts, for example: government OR state

NOT - excludes search term(s). Use to eliminate a concept, for example:ritual NOT sacrifice. Use sparingl