Research Projects in the Department of Archaeology

Archaeological Science and Technology in Africa Initiative (ASTA)

The archaeology of Sub-Saharan Africa is rapidly gaining momentum, thanks to renewed efforts to decolonise and empower indigenous narratives of agency and creativity that have been bolstered further by the increasing application of scientific methods. However, important challenges remain. One is the scarcity of training and archaeological science capacity in sub-Saharan Africa, which is necessary to make these efforts sustainable.

Beasts to Craft: Biocodicology as a new approach to the study of parchment manuscripts

The aim of the ERC project Beasts to Craft (B2C) is to document the biological and craft records in parchment in order to reveal the entangled histories of improvement and parchment production in Europe from 500-1900 AD.

Promised: Promoting Archaeological Science in the Eastern Mediterranean

The Promised project forms a network of excellence in Bioarchaeology and Archaeological Materials Science within the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center (STARC) at the Cyprus Institute linked with the advanced research centres in Archaeological Science at KU Leuven and the University of Cambridge.

Redressing Extinction: Using Environmental Archaeology to Trace the Mode and Tempo of Afro-Indigenous Creolization in the Caribbean

This project investigates when Afro-Indigenous societies emerged in the Caribbean and how the tempo and mode of Creolization varied across ecological and colonial contexts? This inquiry is grounded in environmental archaeology and focuses on the Caribbean—particularly Puerto Rico—as a space of Indigenous-African-European encounters and transformations. The project challenges prevailing narratives of Taíno extinction by investigating the material and ecological traces of Indigenous persistence and Afro-Indigenous ethnogenesis from 1450 to 1815 AD.

SILKGLASS: Production and Dispersion of Silk Road Glass in Central Asia

SILKGLASS is a Horizon Europe MSCA-PF fellowship funded by UKRI and hosted by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.

Tracking the Roadways Across Iranian Lands: A Geospatial Reconstruction of the Persian Royal Road(s) and the cross-cultural link between East and West during the Achaemenid Era (6th-4th century BCE)

PersianTRAIL is a research project using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), and historical-archaeological data to reconstruct the Persian Royal Road (PRR), a key infrastructure of the Achaemenid Empire (6th–4th century BCE). The project examines factors like topography, resource distribution, economy, military logistics, and environmental constraints to understand the empire’s strategic planning.

Research Projects in the Department of Archaeology

Archaeological Science and Technology in Africa Initiative (ASTA)

Beasts to Craft: Biocodicology as a new approach to the study of parchment manuscripts

Promised: Promoting Archaeological Science in the Eastern Mediterranean

Redressing Extinction: Using Environmental Archaeology to Trace the Mode and Tempo of Afro-Indigenous Creolization in the Caribbean

SILKGLASS: Production and Dispersion of Silk Road Glass in Central Asia

Tracking the Roadways Across Iranian Lands: A Geospatial Reconstruction of the Persian Royal Road(s) and the cross-cultural link between East and West during the Achaemenid Era (6th-4th century BCE)

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