Archaeology BA (Hons)

ALGY101 introduces students to the concepts, methods and evidence that archaeologists use to study and interpret the past. Students gain core skills essential to building and evaluating knowledge about the human past from material remains.

This module introduces students to the design and implementation of archaeological projects (and thereby research design more generally). It is concerned with how archaeological questions are addressed through projects, the practices involved in the various stages of archaeological projects, including desk-based assessment, mapping, data collection and analysis, field recording, excavation strategy, interpretation and site/heritage management planning. There is a strong practical element to the module which focusses on the planning and execution of a project relating to a cemetery in Liverpool.

This module introduces students to the archaeology of Classical Greece and the Roman Empire by comparing these two Mediterranean civilisations across common themes relating to the life experiences of people in the ancient world.

In this module you will explore the visual modes and media by which people have expressed themselves individually and societally in different periods of human history. We will start by exploring ideas of visual culture and art, as well as the historical context of the module. You will be introduced to some of the core theoretical issues that underpin the production and consumption of visual culture including questions of what an image is and its relationship to ideology and theories of representation.

We will explore contexts across the ancient Mediterranean from the Palaeolithic to Imperial Rome. We wlll explore a range of themes and you will learn about a wide variety of visual culture from monuments and statues to painted pottery and the visual culture of everyday life. You will learn how to ‘read’ these different media to reconstruct ancient culture and to appreciate the tastes, desires and ideas from the ancient Mediterranean. As you learn about the ancient world you will develop a range of valuable skills that will be of use in academic studies and employment.

What does it mean to be human? When in our evolutionary past did ‘humanity’ emerge, and how do we recognise this in the fossil and archaeological records? What does the study of human evolution tell us about our place on Earth and the future of humanity?

In this module, you will develop a framework for addressing these big questions. You will be introduced to the record of ~7 million years of human evolution from our earliest ancestors to walk on two legs, to the development of farming and settled village life ~10,000 years ago. You will learn about such key events in our evolutionary past as the development of large brains, the making of tools, the control of fire, the emergence of language and art, and the spread of humans across the globe, as well as how to evaluate the archaeological (material culture) and fossil evidence for these developments.

This module provides an introduction to the history and archaeology of the Near East and Aegean from ca. 4,000 to 800 BC, specifically the ancient cultures of the Near East, Levant and Greece. The module includes artefact handling sessions.

ALGY109 is designed as an introductory, level one module aiming to provide students with an overview of Ancient Egyptian history from prehistory to AD 395 both in its chronological development and in its environmental and geographical setting, including the fundamentals of the chronology of Ancient Egypt (including the limitations of available evidence), and a good awareness of how major archaeological sites and other forms of primary evidence fit within this framework.

This module introduces the history and society of the ancient Greek world, from the liberation of Athens from tyranny in the late sixth century BC through to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. The module offers students a foundation of knowledge in the history of events, as well as exploring a range of aspects of Greek society and culture, including the Greek ‘way of war’, sexuality and religion. It also introduces a range of sources for the study of ancient history, especially the two great Greek history writers, Herodotus and Thucydides.

ALGY116 is designed as a year one module which aims to provide students with an overview of Ancient Egyptian culture. In particular it has as its core aim the development of students’ understanding of the broader thematic aspects of Egyptian society, such as writing, religion, art and social structure. The emphasis will be on the use of primary data (written and material culture), and on awareness of how major archaeological sites fit within this framework.

Students will learn about the key issues underlying contemporary research in the field of evolutionary anthropology through sets of directed readings given in advance of each seminar. Seminars will be led by each member of the evolutionary anthropology teaching team, ensuring that you receive a broad overview of different chronological periods, geographical areas, and theoretical perspectives. The module will provide essential background on the main contemporary debates in human evolution, introducing themes that will persist throughout your degree. The module will have a broadly anthropological focus, but will integrate data and conclusions from other relevant subject areas such as evolutionary genetics, psychology, and the environmental sciences.

This module deals with the history and society of Rome and the Roman world from the foundation of Rome to the end of the second century AD, i.e. the periods of the ‘Roman Republic’ and the ‘Principate’ (named after the princeps, a title of the Roman emperor). The aims are to provide (1) an introductory survey of the political and military history of Rome and the Roman empire; (2) to build a sound
chronological, geographical and conceptual framework for understanding the ancient Roman world; (3) to introduce students to reading primary sources in translation and evaluating their historical significance; (4) to introduce students to a limited range of scholarly views on ancient Roman history; and (5) to teach fundamental research skills.

This module offers an introduction to the study of archaeological artefacts and the information they contribute to our understanding of the past. It will introduce a wide range of natural materials and explore the technologies by which they can be worked, shaped and transformed. With its significant practical component, the module offers a chance to gain valuable experience in object handling and to develop your skills in identification, description, analysis and interpretation of both assemblages and artefacts. In the process, you will consider how far it is possible to reconstruct the technologies by which different materials were processed, to determine their origins, and to infer the function of the artefacts they were used to make.

Throughout the course, you will be encouraged to recognise the complex relationships between technology and society and to appreciate the importance of asking meaningful research questions about archaeological artefacts which acknowledge this social context.

ALGY250 is essential for anyone interested in ancient material culture and provides the foundation for further specialisation in archaeological materials research in your final year through ALGY397 and ALGY314.

This course builds on the field experience you have gained as your end of Year 1 training, as we explore the process that follows activity in the field. We will examine the stages of post-excavation, and the creation of published and grey literature of the type generated for archiving by many field archaeology professionals.

The two assignments consider first your experiences on the fieldwork and what you have learnt, presented as a reflexive essay and other smaller components. The second assignment is where you use the skills gained during the teaching this semester to produce a grey literature style report on selected sets of deposits from the fieldwork.

War was a regrettable yet ubiquitous fact of ancient civilisation. This module provides a diachronic and cross-cultural comparative study of warfare as practiced in Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe and the Near East, including Classical Greece and the East Mediterranean. The study addresses six cross-cultural themes: Technology and Sources, Tactics, Society, Infrastructure, Death and Commemoration, and Religion and Ethics. These themes are then applied to the examination of three case study cultures (Archaic and Classical Greece, Iron Age Europe and the Bronze Age Near East).

With a focus on the archaeology of the Eurasian steppe, this module explores the emergence and transformation of steppe pastoralist societies from their origins in complex hunter-gatherer communities to the formation of the first ‘nomadic’ empires. It represents a rare opportunity to encounter the extraordinary archaeological record of Siberia and Central Asia and to focus upon societies whose contribution to global culture has been routinely dismissed in both Euro- and Sino-centric stories of ‘civilisation’.

A combination of taught lectures and student-led seminars, the course will introduce to key concepts and general trajectories, whilst encouraging discussion of broad theoretical ideas and specific archaeological evidence.
Throughout the course, you will investigate critically the changing relationships between steppe societies and their neighbours and explore the transformative role played by pastoralist peoples in conflicts, communication and the rise of the Silk Roads.

The module is specifically designed as a broad entry point for students whose primary interests lie in the prehistoric archaeology and ancient history of Europe, Western Asia or China and it will also provide valuable baseline for those going on to study later periods of Eurasian history.

This module provides students with an introduction to the principles and practical applications of archaeobotany, the study of ancient plant remains retrieved from archaeological sites. Students will have the opportunity to learn hands-on how plant remains (wood and seeds) are analysed (including botanical identification and data analysis methods), what sort of information can be gained for reconstructing past plant food use, economies, landscapes and people-environment interactions, and how archaeobotanical research is integrated to fieldwork projects and post-excavation analysis. The module is delivered through a series of lectures and laboratory-based practical sessions. Assessment is through one essay (topic to choose from a range of subjects made available to students in advance), a portfolio of laboratory work, and one laboratory-based assignment (practical test).

Before the development of agriculture all humans lived by hunting, gathering and fishing. Today, this way of living has largely disappeared. Colonisation, urbanisation and globalisation have collectively disrupted and altered the lives of all but a very few hunter-gatherers. Despite the considerable impact of these external forces, hunter-gatherer communities remain a primary source of knowledge for building hypotheses about how earlier humans may have lived.

We as archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware of the limitations of the ethnographic record of historic and current hunter-gatherers for interpreting the past. Used with caution, however, this body of information can help us think about how prehistoric hunter-gatherers might have organised their lives and solved basic problems of making a living, raising children and resolving conflicts within and between communities. Over the next few weeks we’ll take a comparative approach which means looking at a variety of hunter-gatherer societies living from the tropics to the Arctic to see what they have in common and what areas of their lives differ. We’ll be looking for patterns in adaptations that might be useful for thinking about how prehistoric hunter gatherers may have lived, and how we can test those models given the many limitations of the ethnographic record. There is a deeper purpose to this course and that is to raise our awareness that there are, and were, different ways of living.

What does it mean to be ‘Indigenous’? How did Indigenous peoples live in the Americas and how did European
conquest and colonisation affect them? How did (and does) the knowledge systems and land stewardship of Indigenous people impact European ‘science’?

This module scrutinises these important questions, offering a unique opportunity for students to explore the Americas between the 14th and 19th centuries AD from comparative perspectives. How does our knowledge of pre-colonial and colonial America inform our understanding of the Americas today? Taking the pre-colonial Indigenous societies as starting point, the module will especially focus on issues revolving around ingenuity, dispossession, resistance, gender, colonialism, environmental sustainability, slavery, race, and their legacies.

The module is taught through a series of lectures, seminars, handling sessions in the World Museum and the
International Slavery Museum, class discussion, and group work. Combining academic readings with an array of media (ranging from film, to blog posts, podcasts, social media, among others), you will be introduced to the exceptional new evidence coming from archaeology, history, bioanthropology, geography, art history, literary and
Indigenous studies.

The Upper Palaeolithic is considered by many as the time of the highest development of the hunter-gatherer way of life as seen through the lens of archaeology. Nowhere is this more evident than in western and central Europe. With the arrival of modern humans, archaeologists witness the extinction of the indigenous hominin line of the Neanderthals, the common appearance of elements of symbolic expression in the form of ‘art’ and personal ornamentation, the appearance of specialist and possibly time-delayed subsistence economies, larger social groups, the burial of individuals with a ‘wealthy’ suite of burial goods, complex and high-investment technology and ‘frequent’ stylistic change in the forms of material culture.

The reason for these changes and developments, however, is still a matter of heated debate. Through the course of this module we shall explore the nature of these changes as they can be observed in the archaeological record, in the context of our current understandings of climate change, chronology, and hunter-gatherer ethnography. In particular we shall the evidence to support these interpretations and whether these developments are;

i. intrinsic to the nature of modern human behaviour;
ii. an incremental development through time;
iii. a response to severe local climatic change;
iv. an outcome of the demographic change;
v. a combination of the above.

This module will also help students to develop a set of essential research skills: the critical analysis of archaeological data, the development of a synthetic background section to a particular research topic, and the use of concept maps to help thinking.

This module covers Later British/Irish Prehistory from the Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age. Moving on from a brief introduction to European Prehistory in Year 1 (ALGY106 and ALGY131), we now focus on the key issues currently under debate in Prehistoric studies in Britain: Neolithic sedentism and mobility, how we think about Stonehenge, the new science of migration, settlement and land use, ritual traditions, climate change, and the nature of prehistoric society. This module considers how we have often constructed an uncritical understanding of the past, particularly its power structures, in our own image. As archaeologists of the post-colonial era, we instead investigate how a critical archaeology is working to discover the real ‘difference’ of the past. The aim is to gain a developed understanding of prehistoric social practice and a critical understanding of prehistoric studies.

‘Empire’ is not a word that often follows ‘Athenian democracy’. We usually associate democratic origins with equality and fifth century BC Athens with exceptional cultural creativity. So how did ‘empire’ come to be associated with democracy? This module explores the relationship between the evolution of democratic structures and the extraordinary rise of drama, monuments, and art on the one hand; and the emergence of a territorial ‘empire’ across the Aegean Sea on the other. There are lessons, too, for our own understanding of how culture is connected to politics and resources.

The legislative and management structures related to heritage, and the purpose, scale and effectiveness of these varies greatly across the globe, and is constantly being changed in response to economic, social, cultural and legislative forces. This module examines current agendas, policies and practices in a historical perspective, and then concentrates on a critical review of current practice. Aspects of the varied UK systems are considered within a comparative international context, considering the management issues associated with sites, monuments and buildings, and objects, museums and archives. Heritage managers mediate between remnants of the past and political, cultural and economic structures in the present. Whilst the module contains much that relates to practice within current legislative, cultural and economic systems, it also reflects on the ethical and socio-political dilemmas often facing heritage management.

This module aims to prepare and empower students to participate successfully in professional work experience, such as a year in a placement or internship, or volunteering opportunity, and to develop, in a pro-active way, life-long skills, attitudes, and behaviours. Students will have the opportunity to engage in inter-disciplinary, team-based research, gain the knowledge, confidence, and self-awareness to source and successfully apply for professional work opportunities.

The module examines Stone Age Archaeology of the last million years, concentrating on the period of Homo erectus, the emergence of Homo sapiens, and the appearance of anatomically modern humans some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. In geographic scope, the module deals chiefly with developments in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. It covers the first appearance of art, the interaction between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals and the archaeology of the Upper Palaeolithic up to the glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago. Its principal aims are to examine Old World Archaeology from the prime time of Homo erectus (>500,000 years) to the time when Homo sapiens sapiens is fully established in Europe (about 40,000 years ago).

In this module students are introduced to the use of human skeletal assemblages as archaeology and material culture. Students will handle human remains and gain an understanding of how basic identification, ageing and sexing is done. This module also looks at current techniques such as stable isotope and DNA analysis and ethical regulations.

The module CLAH222 provides an opportunity for students to undertake a placement in a setting which matches their academic and possible career interests to develop materials and / or undertake tasks within a practical or vocational context, to apply academic knowledge from their degree and to develop personal and employability skills within a working environment.
Following an application process for work placements, this 15 credit module runs in semester two with a minimum of 24 hours of placement, plus supporting workshops and independent study. There is an element of flexibility in how the placement is scheduled based on the needs of the organisation and taking into consideration individual timetables. This could be half a day for six weeks or two half days for three weeks, for example.
Application for the module is via a competitive process, which usually takes the following form: students express interest in the module and preferred sectors of employment; details of the available placements are circulated towards the end of Year One; students submit 2 applications and Curriculum Vitae (CVs) for the employers to consider; the employers invite students to interview and they select the successful candidate(s).
The Careers and Employability Service supports students during the application and interview process. Once a student has been successful in the application process, a learning agreement will need to be drafted, Health and Safety pro-forma completed and, where applicable, Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and other checks made on behalf of the student.

This module provides an introduction to the Akkadian language and literature

This module provides an introduction to the Sumerian language and literature.

This module investigates the nature of the society of third millennium southern Mesopotamia, the first urban society.

This module looks at specific themes in Roman archaeology in their British context. The study of the monuments of Roman Britain is arguably the oldest facet of archaeological research in Britain. With a history than spans over 500 years, Britain as a Roman province possesses an unrivalled data base of archaeological research and its interpretation. In addition to this, recent work on the province has placed it in the vanguard of the on-going debate of the use of archaeological theory to practical applications.

This module explores the funerary environment of private tombs in Pharaonic Egypt through the comparative study of the three main groups of evidence: Architecture / archaeological material, iconography and texts.

This module considers display and public interpretation in museums and galleries on the one hand and publicly accessible sites and monuments on the other. This module examines current UK interpretation theories, policies and practices in an international comparative perspective. Heritage interpretation and display brings understanding of the past to peoples in the present, though what aspects of the past to reveal and emphasise can be highly political and controversial. The module concentrates on current practice, but it also reflects on the selectivity of heritage interpretation decisions, and the ways interpretation can exclude as well as include various sectors of society.

This module will introduce students to the broader context of professional practice in the fields of heritage and archaeology in our contemporary society. Specifically, this module seeks to enhance students’ skills in identifying points of contention or interest between different sections of the community in relation to a series of key themes. The module will also enable students to think clearly through the potential ramifications of following particular courses of action related to the management of heritage assets – including archaeological remains, standing buildings and monuments, and landscapes both human and natural. These themes include the ownership of heritage assets, access to heritage assets, the presentation of heritage assets, issues of sustainability and the development of assets and, lastly, claims to authority over such assets by archaeological and heritage professionals. Teaching methods and assessment will concentrate on helping students to identifying potential conflicts of interest in the study and management of heritage, exploring the political and ethical nature of these conflicts of interest and presenting a specific case for action or resolution. The module will require students to become familiar with the detail of a series of current case studies.

A 10,000 – word dissertation on an original archaeological/Egyptological research topic which is able to demonstrate that the student can: identify a research question, design and conduct a work plan to explore this question, assemble and analyse academic literature (bibliography) and primary evidence (original sources, datasets), and present a coherent set of data and theoretical arguments in order to analyse and interpret the question in hand.

The African archaeological record is unique in its longevity and continuity from the first stone tools to the development of farming and early states. This course selects three intervals of technological and social change starting 500,000 years ago and ending with the development of plant and animal domestication.
The first transition is from Early to Middle Stone Age (between 500,000-200,000 years ago), the second from the Middle to Later Stone Age (70,000 to 20,000 years ago) and finally the shift from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to ones based around farming and cattle after 10,000 years ago.
Along the way we’ll consider how technologies change, what role climate change plays as a driver of innovation and explore the emergence of symbol-use and the appearance of rock art.

This module will help you develop a solid understanding of how archaeologists use scientific analysis to ask important questions about ancient materials, artefacts, technologies, and society. It is designed to build upon the knowledge and skills developed in ALGY250, enabling students with an interest in scientific research to familiarise themselves with a range of analytical instruments and methodologies, how they work and how they can be applied to the archaeological record. The module will equip students with the skills and experience necessary to select appropriate analytical methodologies for their research and to critically evaluate analytical research data published in the literature.

The module provides an excellent pairing with ALGY314, which offers a more practical introduction to laboratory
skills.

This module examines Egypt and the Near East during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550-1200 BCE) as part of the world’s earliest well-documented international system. Students are introduced to the key events and political actors of this period, as well as the critical analysis of relevant primary sources. Key issues in International Relations theory are introduced through their application to the Late Bronze Age.

The popular image of the landscape of ancient Egypt is one filled with impressive stones monuments such as royal pyramids, colossal statues, and massive stone temples.
The amount of effort put into creating temples in which the gods lived and tombs in which the dead lived for eternity is one of the most remarkable features of ancient Egyptian culture. But what about the places where ordinary Egyptians lived? Because of their geography (in the flood plain of the Nile rather than on the desert) and the materials used to build them (mud-brick rather than stone) the houses, palaces, towns and cities of ancient Egypt are much less easy to find and to study. However, good sources of evidence do exist which can help us understand the built environment inhabited by the Egyptians, from the villages which housed the workers on the royal tomb projects to the ‘lost’ cities of ancient Egypt which were some of the largest in the ancient world, but which are only now beginning to be properly understood by modern archaeologists.

Greek culture was spread to the furthest limits of the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions by a series of so-called ‘colonies’, including such important modern cities as Marseilles and Istanbul. The motivations and methods behind this huge archaeological phenomenon remain unclear, but in the hands of the scholars writing in an age of neo-classical revivalism, the analogy to their own British Empire was clear and self-evident. This module combines History, Ancient History and Archaeology in its examination this crucial moment in world history and its subsequent use and abuse by imperialist scholars. No prior knowledge is required and the module includes a team presentation that aims to develop transferrable employment skills.

This module examines the archaeology of the southern Levant in the Iron Age as the context within which the Hebrew Bible took shape.  Lectures, readings and seminars address current issues of debate within the field, as well as emerging methodologies and recent evidence.

Our aim in this module is firstly to develop a good knowledge of what is present and, secondly, an appreciation of the difficulties of interpreting objects and images that in many ways seem so similar to contemporary objects. The presence of ‘artworks’ has been recognized as a significant feature of the Upper Palaeolithic since the mid 19th century, whilst the existence of cave paintings and engravings dating to the Upper Palaeolithic was first acknowledged in the early 20th century. These artefacts and images have come to be seen as the evidence for human symbol activity: the communication of meanings between groups and individuals on the basis of mutually comprehensible and possibly abstract ‘images’ in situations of co-presence and possibly co-absence. An understanding of these objects and markings is therefore central to the study of human cognitive and social evolution.

Despite the long history of research in this field, there remain real research challenges in recording what is present, understanding how it was made, determining the makers of the imagery, and above all interpreting what it might have meant to Palaeolithic human populations. Recent scientific work in dating, paint analysis and the identification of elements of animal behaviour and human form has transformed what we can learn form these images and markings.

The module begins with the discovery of the art, looks at recent developments in dating and recording, and then explores a variety of issues in interpretation. An underlying theme is to look at each of these elements, through three overlapping narratives; the story of the practice of art recording; the story of artistic interpretation; and the story of the interpretation of meaning.

This is practice-based module introducing the laboratory analysis of archaeological materials. Through seminars and practicals you will be offered in-depth tuition in a range of common materials and have the opportunity to experience analytical and technological processes at first hand. You will learn to describe common materials under the microscope and to identify some of the basic indicators of human interaction with these materials (using appropriate analytical instruments). The module is an ideal choice for anyone looking towards a career in archaeological finds processing or research and provides an ideal pairing with ALGY397, offering the chance to put theoretical knowledge into practice.

This module provides an introduction to the Akkadian language and literature

The module covers the Iron Age in Europe from 800 BC-AD 70. We will focus on Celts in the texts, prehistoric houses/settlement and agriculture, ritual deposition, mortuary traditions (e.g. chariot burials, bog bodies), and social change. With a focus on Britain, we will also look at the continental material (Netherlands, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain), on the development of the field, and the themes of settlement, traditions of artefact deposition, land use, burial traditions, and understanding society.

This module investigates the nature of the society of third millennium southern Mesopotamia, the first urban society.

This module provides an introduction to the Sumerian language and literature.

How does our knowledge of the past help us understand the present and shape the future? This module aims at answering this crucial question by bringing together your interdisciplinary perspectives and the staff specialisations.
We will discuss some of the major societal questions that we face globally today, and reflect upon the relevance of knowledge about the past from comparative perspectives for wider debates about the present and future of humanity. The module will prepare you for life after graduation by providing you with transferable skills (including digital fluency, communication skills, critical thinking, teamwork, and increased cultural understanding) that are highly valued by employers across sectors. This module is taught through a series of workshops (mixed format presentations by staff, class discussion, group and individual work).

Students have the opportunity to apply knowledge and skills acquired through the detailed examination and criticism of specific sources. Specific themes for the module include but are not limited to:

Use of primary evidence: documents, literature, and also archaeology, pictures;
Deir el Medina as a model village community, farming communities;
Social structures: kings, hierarchies, meritocracy and hereditary official classes, class structures, patronage and individuality, slavery;
Women, family and kinship;
childhood and old age;
Markets, money, wealth and inheritance;
Education, in practice and as acculturation of the scribal class in function and morality;
Law, conflict resolution, interpersonal problems.

The study of the frontiers of the Roman empire represents one of the oldest branches of European archaeology. Their study has traditionally complimented explanations of Roman history and therefore the foreign policies of the various imperial dynasties. The discipline of Roman Frontiers Studies has, however, tended to be subservient to an interpretative framework derived from historical sources. Today the archaeology of the subject is now sufficiently self-confident to stand independent scrutiny. In turn more recent scholarship on the subject of the frontiers of the empire have focused on them as zones and regions rather than simply as linear barriers. This fresh outlook has, in turn, occasioned a greater awareness of the evidence of life, military and non-military, in frontier situations.

This course offers critical engagement with the legal, literary, archaeological and epigraphic evidence concerning the institution of Roman slavery. Exploring the firm place occupied by slavery in Roman society, lectures will investigate the bleak reality of slavery as ownership, but also foreground the slaves’ agency through their occupational paths, involvement in cultic activities and rebellions, before approaching their acquisition of freedom through manumission. The course shows how slavery deeply affected not only the socio-economic life of the Romans, but also significantly permeated their cultural endeavours. It seeks furthermore to stimulate students to reflect on the various methodological issues that scholars encounter when trying to access the experience of the enslaved in Roman society.

Besides developing the skills of historical and critical analysis on the basis of diverse primary source material, the students will engage with the most recent scholarship, and will be encouraged to pursue their own interests within the framework of the course.