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Department of Archaeology

 
Read more at: After The Plague

After The Plague

A multi-disciplinary research project focusing on St. John's Hospital cemetery, Cambridge, with an aim to learn more about the lives of the medieval urban poor during the bubonic plague epidemic known as the Black Death.


Read more at: ANCESTORS: Making Ancestors: the politics of death in prehistoric Europe

ANCESTORS: Making Ancestors: the politics of death in prehistoric Europe

The above photo shows: A left lateral aspect of a cranium from Catignano (a Middle Neolithic village in Abruzzo), showing two healing trepanations on the left parietal bone and healed fracture on the left frontal and parietal bones of a 40-50 year old female

 


Read more at: Archaeological Science and Technology in Africa Initiative (ASTA)

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.


Read more at: B-CARED

B-CARED

The bioarchaeological characterization of disabled individuals from the past is particularly challenging because it pushes the boundaries of the interpretation of pathologies recognisable on human remains. With my project, namely B-CARED, I will investigate the bioarchaeological approaches for recreating “Past to life”. In so doing, the osteobiographical approach offers a possible framework, in which human remains are used to understand not only the embodied experience during life but also seeing people as playing diverse social roles (e.g.


Read more at: Cape Verde

Cape Verde

The Archaeology of Cape Verde

At the invitation of a local university and the island's Ministry of Culture's IPC, the CHRC  - Chris Evans & Marie Louise Stig Sørensen - have been investigating its early Portuguese town of Cidade Velha since 2006. Founded in the middle decades of the 15th century, and then for some three centuries the Islands' capital, it became a major hub of the Atlantic Slave Trade, with thousands of Africans transhipped each year to the Americas.


Read more at: FRAGSUS: Fragility and Sustainability in the restricted island environments of Malta

FRAGSUS: Fragility and Sustainability in the restricted island environments of Malta

Study of the sustainability and subsequent radical change amongst the Maltese Temple Building populations of prehistoric Malta in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC.


Read more at: Globalization, Citizens, and Society in Antiquity: A Comparative Study of Egypt and Ugarit

Globalization, Citizens, and Society in Antiquity: A Comparative Study of Egypt and Ugarit

My project for the McDonald Institute investigates the interplay of institutional authorities, private citizens, localities, and global networks in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 16th-12th centuries BC), the first phase of globalization in world history. Globalization is not only an issue of connectivities and networks, but it also depends on the agency of individuals and social groups at the local level that generate alternative configurations of power, either in concert or in contrast with governments and institutional authorities.


Read more at: How old are the trade routes in Central Africa? Developing a history of the exchange networks through the cases of Copperbelt and Niari Basin copper deposits

How old are the trade routes in Central Africa? Developing a history of the exchange networks through the cases of Copperbelt and Niari Basin copper deposits

Long-distance exchange networks played key roles in the socio-political history of Central Africa before the 20th century, but they are poorly known prior to the 19th century owing to a scarcity of written sources covering the earlier centuries. Archaeological data, however, suggest that major 19th-century trade routes were well established several centuries before.


Read more at: How to build a hominin: predictive simulations of locomotion in human evolution

How to build a hominin: predictive simulations of locomotion in human evolution

How did our ancestors walk? Perhaps the greatest challenge that this question has posed in the past, is the lack of methodological applications in which no study has previously reconstructed how our ancestors moved using biomechanical modelling techniques. We need to consider not just individual bones when reconstructing movement, but to look at the full body to begin to tell the story of our ancestors’ movement. Muscles animate our body, permitting us to walk, run and even dance. We must reconstruct the muscles of the body to understand ancestral locomotion.


Read more at: In Africa: The role of East Africa in the evolution of human diversity

In Africa: The role of East Africa in the evolution of human diversity

In Africa is a five-year research programme to investigate the origins of our species - Homo sapiens - and its diversity in Africa, and aims at making new discoveries of early human fossils, archaeological sites and their environmental context.

Read more at: Kani Shaie Archaeological Project (KSAP)

Kani Shaie Archaeological Project (KSAP)

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.


Read more at: Keros Project

Keros Project

Excavations at the settlement adjoining the prehistoric sanctuary on Keros in the Cycladic Islands of Greece, the earliest maritime sanctuary in the world (2750-2240BC).


Read more at: Landscape Historical Ecology and Archaeology of Ancient Pastoral Societies in Kenya

Landscape Historical Ecology and Archaeology of Ancient Pastoral Societies in Kenya

Around 1,200 years ago, archaeological evidence suggests pre-existing pastoralist societies that had been present in some parts of eastern Africa since c. 5,000 BP experience significant cultural and economic change. Materials signs of these include the uptake of iron smelting technologies, new ceramic styles, and changes in food production. In the following centuries, the region also experienced several significant shifts in climate, alternating between periods of increased rainfall and extended droughts.


Read more at: MendTheGap Project

MendTheGap Project

MendTheGap - Smart Integration of Genetics with Sciences of the Past in Croatia.


Read more at: Navigating new economic networks in ancient Egypt

Navigating new economic networks in ancient Egypt

The project seeks to examine the economic and social relationships of ancient Egyptian tomb owners. Drawing upon both textual and archaeological sources, in particular the interplay between them, the project will analyse new quantifiable economic data from private rock-cut tombs during the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1069 BCE) in order to determine the economic impact these funerary monuments had on society. Utilising ‘Social Network Analysis’ the project will qualify the flow of resources that was invested in the building of the tombs.


Read more at: No dollar too dark: free trade, piracy, privateering and illegal slave trading in the northeast Caribbean, early 19th century

No dollar too dark: free trade, piracy, privateering and illegal slave trading in the northeast Caribbean, early 19th century

This project integrates maritime archaeology, history, geophysical survey and anthropology to investigate illicit trade between the Caribbean islands St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew and St. Maarten from 1816 to c.1840 with the aim of understanding:

-The entanglements between international, regional and local factors that drove these islands to engage in illicit trade.

-How these islands functioned together as a network for illicit trade, smuggling and laundering, the processes involved, and how long it occurred.


Read more at: Pastoralist Mobility, Diet, and Resilience in East Africa: Developing Deep Time Historical Ecologies of Sustainability

Pastoralist Mobility, Diet, and Resilience in East Africa: Developing Deep Time Historical Ecologies of Sustainability

This project is a response to calls to build long-term sustainability and resilience into pastoral social-ecological systems in sub-Saharan Africa through provision of deep histories of human-environment interactions. It focuses on collecting and analysing archaeological and related data on the responses of pastoralist communities inhabiting the Laikipia and Leroghi plateaus, northern Kenya, to cycles of extreme drought and enhanced rainfall over the last millennium.


Read more at: Pragmatic Imperialism, Communities and Rituality at the Frontiers of Roman North Africa

Pragmatic Imperialism, Communities and Rituality at the Frontiers of Roman North Africa

The aim of this project will be to investigate the nature and impact of Roman imperialism on the frontiers of North Africa (specifically the Maghreb), especially in considering the role of Roman imperialism on the political economy of the region and its impact on both pre-existing communities and the formation of new communities in the provinces. The notion of frontier is wide-ranging and is inspired by Border Studies, and considers the impact of the frontier in community-formation at both the border and the provincial cores of the Roman Maghreb.


Read more at: Restoring Cultural Property and Communities after Conflict

Restoring Cultural Property and Communities after Conflict

This project seeks to develop a theoretical and practical understanding of the relationship between reparations, responsibility and victimhood in transitional societies.


Read more at: Rising from the Depths AHRC-GCRF Network

Rising from the Depths AHRC-GCRF Network

The Rising from the Depths Network aims to identify ways in which the marine and maritime cultural heritage of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar can be used to benefit coastal communities in these countries. Many of these communities are among the poorest in the region and are especially vulnerable to the impacts of geopolitical turmoil and environmental change.


Read more at: Safeguarding Sites: the IHRA Charter for Best Practice

Safeguarding Sites: the IHRA Charter for Best Practice

This five-year project funded by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance seeks to write European heritage guidelines for Holocaust and Roma genocide sites in order to safeguard them for the future.


Read more at: Science @ Tarquinia

Science @ Tarquinia

The project Science @ Tarquinia aims to provide the complementary scientific support for the long-standing study of the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia by the University of Milan. This Unesco World Heritage site is well known for its magnificent painted tombs, its city walls, the Temple of Ara Regina and the monumental zone where the University of Milan has worked for over 30 years. The collaborative work (which started in September 2019) includes flotation, micromorphology, AMS dating, isotopic analysis and aDNA.


Read more at: Shanidar Cave Project

Shanidar Cave Project

Shanidar cave viewed from the south (Photograph: Graeme Barker) 

The Shanidar Cave Project


Read more at: The Contemporary Archaeology of Agriculture in Elgeyo-Marakwet Kenya

The Contemporary Archaeology of Agriculture in Elgeyo-Marakwet Kenya

Agriculture in Africa faces multiple challenges. Climate extremes, ecosystem degradation and population growth continually prompt calls for the urgent transformation of food systems. Mainstream attempts remain focused on modernising paradigms in ways that overlook historic and contemporary smallholder practice as primary sources of innovation. This project challenges this narrative, adopting an archaeological framework to reconceptualise smallholder innovation as an iterative historic process harnessable as a mechanism for future agricultural design.


Read more at: The role of traumatic mortality in late human evolution from an integrated non-invasive bioarchaeological and taphonomic perspective

The role of traumatic mortality in late human evolution from an integrated non-invasive bioarchaeological and taphonomic perspective

Traumatic death affects our daily life, but how did traumatic mortality affect human behaviour from an evolutionary perspective? TRAUMOBITA aims to understand how traumatic mortality among prehistoric humans shaped our behaviour during the Late Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene. Confirming that how we died had an enormous influence on our ancestors and represents an enormous change in how we understand human societies.


Read more at: Yangshao Culture: 100 Year Research History and Heritage Impact

Yangshao Culture: 100 Year Research History and Heritage Impact

This project analyzes the historiography of the Yangshao Culture and its functioning as a heritage icon for the Chinese nation as well as its impact on various societal concerns.