Research Projects in the Department of Archaeology

At the intersection among the arts, science, and technology, printing is widely recognised as the invention of the millennium. However, and in spite of a resurgence of traditional typographic methods among artists and craftspeople, letterpress equipment and technology face an uncertain future.

Image: Pastoralist rock art, Serengeti, Tanzania. Photo: P. Lane.

Focusing on cultural heritage, the project is exploring awareness of the archaeology of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna alongside local relationships with the site.

This project aims to study the crucibles and finished metal objects recently recovered from the Great Zimbabwe World Heritage site, using techniques from earth and materials sciences.

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.

Archaeological data is often biased and incomplete. This is a well-known issue for most archaeologists. Although studies of specific sites and small regions can have this into account, the effect of this problem increases exponentially as archaeologists expand their chronological and geographic frame, and try to answer questions related to general dynamics and broad human processes.

‘BODIES MATTER’ focuses on the material culture of bodies (and the self) in colonial borderlands by comparing three frontiers at various periods and geographies: the Spanish Empire’s southern borderland in the Americas in the AD 16th-19th century, the Punic western Mediterranean in the 6th-2nd century BC, and the Islamic-Christian Ethiopian frontier between the AD 10th and 15th century.

EHSCAN is a Horizon-MSCA-2022-PF scheme Fellowship Funded by UKRI and hosted by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. 

Research into global connections, which formed the basis for the spread of objects, ideas, innovations, religions and empires, continues to fundamentally shape our understanding of the development of contemporary society. While the historiography of global connections is dominated by a European perspective, new research into overlooked vantage points combined with innovative methodological and theoretical approaches provide important opportunities to challenge and enrich perspectives of global history. 

A large-scale multi-disciplinary study of pre-Roman iron technology in the Iberian Peninsula.

The Kani Shaie Archaeological Project is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and the Sulaymaniyah Directorate of Antiquities. Since 2013, the project organises excavations at the site of Kani Shaie near the town of Bazyan in Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan.

A new archaeological project at the ancient city of Lagash in south Iraq (modern Tell al-Hiba) began in March-April of 2019. LAP is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania (USA) and Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.

LHEAAPS aims to reconstruct the past adaptive strategies of East African pastoralists, and their relative resilience to environmental shocks under different systems of land management, rangeland access, and population and livestock densities across Kenya. The research is designed to generate knowledge that has applied value geared toward enhancing the socio-ecological and cultural resilience and sustainable livelihood strategies of contemporary pastoral societies in the face of current global challenges.

The project has four main research questions:

This project sets out to produce a comprehensive, problematised synthesis and interpretation of long-term social and economic dynamics along Mediterranean Africa during the Holocene (9600-700 BC).

The project focuses on the models of circulation of raw materials during the Iberian Late Prehistory, as well as the use and social value given to the different materials, with special attention to metals and amber. 

This project aims to gain a better understanding of the relationship of Crete with the world outside the island through the lens of a key body of materials: goldwork.

The Must Farm project is the first landscape scale archaeological investigation of deep Fenland, with its complex geological history.

Stone tool artefacts represent the only continuous material record from early hominins across a period of three million years. Lithics provide information about early human technological adaptations and innovations, and in turn, understanding these technologies allows insights into early human behaviour. This assessment is based on the fact that lithic artefacts reflect (un-)conscious decision-making. Tool design, for instance, is characterised by the selection of the raw material and choices about overall tool morphology, edge retouch, and other factors.

How did the biomechanics and ergonomics of the human hand influence the use and production of Palaeolithic stone tools? Traditionally, stone tools have been analyzed for their morphological properties and technological characteristics to infer the cognitive and social evolution of early hominins and modern humans. However, the role of musculoskeletal aspects in the effective use of these tools has been largely overlooked, resulting in an incomplete understanding of Palaeolithic technologies.