UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON – Welcome to the Society for Historical Archaeology

Institution Name:
University College London (UCL)
Department Title:
Institute of Archaeology
Faculty members:
1. Mark Altaweel Complex adaptive systems; Computational Social Science; Mesopotamian history; social-ecological systems; social-ecological systems; Near East archaeology; data science; machine learning Manuel Arroyo Kalin South American Archaeology: Amazonia, Patagonia; Geoarchaeology, soil micromorphology; Human Niche-Building, Historical Ecology, Landscape History, Anthropogenic soils; Ethnoarchaeology, Cultural Transmission; Indigenous Archaeology
2. Andrew Bevan GIS and spatial analysis; Material culture and value; Mediterranean archaeology and history; Human settlement and landscape ecology; Archaeological survey and excavation methods
3. Beverley Butler The theorisation and re-conceptualisation of cultural heritage studies; museum historiography and critical museological theory; the application of intellectual history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary theory, postcolonial theory, deconstruction and memory-studies to cultural heritage/ museum studies;the application of ethnographic methods and anthropological theory to cultural heritage / museum studies themes of cultural loss and revivalism; critical studies of the archive; postcolonial politics of memory-work; cosmopolitanism and ethnicity; maritime heritage; cultural / human rights and marginalised histories; heritage and wellbeing; specialist focus upon North Africa and Eastern Mediterranean and upon Alexandrian / Egyptian and Palestinian cultural heritage and cultural politics.
4. Michael Charlton Archaeological science (materials science and quantitative methods); Preindustrial technology; Pyrotechnology; Experimental archaeology; Cultural transmission theory; Evolutionary archaeology; World archaeology Corisande Fenwick Islamic and late antique archaeology, particularly on the themes of empire, urbanism, religion, environment and technology, as well as those working on North African archaeology (any period) or cultural heritage in the MENA region.
5. Ian Freestone Early materials and technologies, and the application of scientific methods to the investigation of artefacts and their interpretation. Particular focus on glass but also ceramic materials and the by-products of early metallurgy.
6. Dorian Fuller Archaeobotany: Human Plant Use in Prehistory, from hunter-gatherer plant to use reconstructing agricultural systems and systems of plant cooking. The Origins and Spread of Agriculture: including plant domestication and arable ecology. Current or recent work has included the Near East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Sudan and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Britain, and the Caribbean. I have long fieldwork experience and knowledge of material cultural and social evolution for Nubia and India. I have broader interests in environmental archaeology, long-term environmental history and the “Anthropocene”.
7. Andrew Gardner. The archaeology of the Roman world and early Medieval Europe, with a particular focus on Britain; Social theory in archaeology, including issues of identity, agency, and temporality; The archaeology of frontiers, boundaries and borderlands; Approaches to violence and warfare in past societies; The role of the past in contemporary politics; Archaeogaming – computer and video game archaeology.
8. Andrew Garrard. The Palaeolithic and Neolithic of Western Asia: especially the adaptations of Neanderthal and early modern human societies, late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, the beginnings of agriculture and pastoralism, and the emergence of early village societies. General interests in the reconstruction of past environments, subsistence and site formation processes.
9. Elizabeth Graham. Maya archaeology; tropical urbanism; long-term environmental impact and anthropogenic soils; coastal trade and commerce; Spanish and British colonial periods; artefact care and access to on-site collections. Research area: Belize
10. Sue Hamilton. Landscape archaeology: Later European Prehistory; Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Polynesia; Sensory and gendered landscapes; Phenomenology; Rethinking archaeological field practice
11. Rodney Harrison. Critical Heritage Studies: Heritage, multiculturalism and globalisation; Posthumanist theory and environmental humanities; Climate change and Anthropocene studies; Intangible and indigenous heritage; Museum studies; History and philosophy of conervation, museums, anthropology and archaeology; Archaeologies of the present and recent past; Contemporary material culture studies; Historical archaeology; Archaeologies of colonialism; Australian archaeology
12. Rachel King. Archaeologies of the recent and contemporary past in Africa, with special attention to southern Africa; heritage and political resistance in Africa; heritage and development, especially resource extraction; history of archaeological thought in and about sub-Saharan Africa; archival, ethnographic, and landscape methodologies; heritage teaching and learning methods
13. Mark Lake. The development and use of quantitative and computational methods for studying the past, especially agent-based computer simulation and geographical information systems; the evolutionary origins of cultural transmission, Mesolithic settlement strategies in Scotland and the spread of farming in Neolithic Europe; the problem of memes and the manner in which human innovation explores design space.
14. Kris Lockyear. Geophysical survey in archaeology; Archaeological methods, especially in field archaeology, including field survey, photography, and excavation; Iron age and Roman archaeology and numismatics particularly in the UK and Romania; Multivariate Statistical methods; The archaeology and history of Hertfordshire.
15. Kevin MacDonald. West African Complex Societies; African Historical Archaeology (including oral traditions); Historical Archaeology in the New World (especially concerning the African Diaspora); Pottery Analysis; Archaeolozoology; Prehistory of African Pastoralism
16. Louise Martin. Zooarchaeology The role of animals in past human societies; Hunting and herding practices in prehistoric western Asia; Animal domestications; production and consumption of animal foods; Mammalian ecology and ethology
17. Gabriel Moshenska. Public archaeology; History of archaeology; Archaeology of the modern world; Conflict archaeology (focus on 20th Century); The politics of the past; Decolonising archaeology; Conflict commemoration and memory studies; Material culture studies; Community archaeology
18. Theano Moussouri. Knowledge construction and meaning-making in museums and other informal learning settings; The organisation of learning in family and other everyday contexts; Public engage with disciplinary knowledge and everyday knowledge; Museum learning in the digital age; Working with culturally and linguistically diverse audiences; Museum learning practice, knowledge co-production and professional identity; Practice-based research, reflective practice and action research
19. Claudia Naeser. Archaeology in Egypt and Nubia from prehistory to Islam; funerary archaeology; the social and political dimensions of archaeological practice; the production, appropriation and consumption of archaeological heritage places in the contemporary world.
20. Caitlin O’Grady. Conservation of archaeological materials; analysis and interpretation of archaeological materials including ceramics, lime plaster and mudbrick, as well as historic conservation treatment materials; history and development of conservation and conservation science disciplines; collections survey.
21. Jose Oliver. Caribbean Pre-Columbian and early European contact period history (archaeology, ethnohistory and historical linguistics) ; South American topical lowland Amerindian history (archaeology, ethnohistory, linguistics and ethnography); Epistemology and Theories of Chiefdom or ‘Middle Range’ Polities (Americas & Pacific) ; Development and evolution of subsistence economies of South America and the Caribbean; The materiality and networks of political-religious power (Amazonia and the Circum-Caribbean) ; Regional and Long-distance trade economy & exchange networks Ethnogenesis
22. Mike Parker Pearson. Stonehenge: its purpose and people; The Beaker people: diet and mobility in Britain 2500-1700BC; The Outer Hebrides: settlement and society from prehistory to the post-medieval period on the island of South Uist; Death and burial: funerary archaeology; Madagascar: society and change in the Indian Ocean; Prehistoric Britain and Europe in the 1st millennia BC and AD; Identifying mummification from skeletonised remains: soft tissue preservation in prehistoric Europe; Public archaeology and heritage; Ethnoarchaeology and material culture
23. Dominic Perring. Applied Archaeology (development-led archaeology, planning and archaeology, archaeology and urban regeneration, contemporary archaeological practice); the
24. archaeology of Roman London (history of archaeological research in London, urban society, London and the annona, impacts of exogenous stochastic shock on urban resilience, etc. ); Roman town planning and domestic architecture (social meanings of urban and domestic space); Architecture, art & ideology in antiquity; Archaeology of the Roman provinces (especially Britain & Syria); Cultural Resource Management in UK and Middle-East
25. Renata Peters. I am an objects conservator with a background in fine art and a keen interest in ethics and conservation decision-making, especially how the interactions between tangible and intangible aspects of objects affect the conservation process. I have worked with different kinds of collections in South and North America, Europe and Africa. But I am especially interested in indigenous and archaeological collections from Latin America and Africa. At the moment, I am working on the conservation of lithics and fossils from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) and starting a research project about contemporary productions of bark cloth in South America.
26. Patrick Quinn. Thin Section Ceramic Petrography and Geochemistry; Prehistoric Ceramic Production and Consumption in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean; Pre-Contact Hunter Gatherer Ceramics of Southern California; Thin Section Petrography of Archaeological Ceramics of all Periods of UK; Application of Micropalaeontology to Archaeology; Ceramic Craft Technology and Organisation of Production in Qin Period China.
27. Milijana Radivojevic. Archaeomaterials: metals and ceramics; Origins and evolution of early metallurgy in Eurasia; Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age archaeology and metallurgy in southeast Europe and the Eurasian Steppe; Silk Roads archaeology; Complex networks science and archaeology; Aesthetics of archaeological material culture; Archaeology and Public Engagement
28. Carolyn Rando. Methodological advancement in forensic anthropology; Modern human skeletal variation; Digital approaches in forensic anthropology; Forensic taphonomy and estimating time since death; Cognitive bias in forensic anthropology; Congenital diseases of childhood; Ancient disease pathways General fields of interest:Forensic Anthropology, Bioarchaeology, Dental Anthropology, Palaeopathology, and Palaeoepidemiology
29. Andrew Reid. Later archaeology of eastern and southern Africa; Complex societies; Livestock management and butchery practices; The Archaeology of African and European contact; Contributions to the African Heritage and Archaeology website
30. Andrew Reynolds. The archaeology of early medieval societies in north-western Europe, especially Britain during the period AD700-1200, and the archaeology of standing buildings. Recent research themes include the archaeology of governance, the geography of burial in the landscape of early medieval England and the nature of physical, temporal and social boundaries as expressed in the archaeological record. Andrew is particularly interested in the methodologies employed by archaeologists working in documented periods.
31. Corinna Riva. Iron Age Italy and the 1st millennium BC in the Central Mediterranean: interaction between the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Sea regions; comparative archaeology of the 1st-millennium BC Mediterranean; colonialism and colonisation; theoretical approaches to cultural contact and material culture; Mediterranean ‘marginal’ landscapes; Mediterranean Archaic economies and trade.
32. Julia Shaw. Archaeology and art of South Asia: urbanisation, religious history, state-formation, agriculture, land-use and environmental control, historical water studies, ecological history; sectarianism, politics and archaeology; landscape and survey archaeology; archaeology of sacred geography and 'natural places'; rock-art; Archaeology of Asian religions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism; Archaeology of medicine, healing and disability; Interfaces between archaeology, anthropocene studies, and the environmental humanities: Archaeologies of environmental ethics and intellectual responses to climate change; Historical attitudes towards 'nature' and human:animal:environment interactions; Archaeology, religion and ecology; Archaeology and environmental / climate-change activism.
33. Stephen Shennan. Application of biological evolutionary theory and methods to archaeology; Prehistoric demography; Ethnicity; Prehistoric social and economic institutions; cultural evolution, European Neolithic and Bronze Age
34. Bill Sillar. archaeology and ethnography of the Andes; Ceramics; Material culture and technology; Biography of an artefact
35. Ulrike Sommer. The European Neolithic; Processes of Neolithisation; History of Archaeology; Lithic technology; Archaeological taphonomy
36. Rachael Sparks. The material culture of the Levant in the Bronze and Iron Ages; Stone vessel production, distribution and use; Cultural interaction between Egypt and the Levant The relationship between material culture and group identity; Canaanite burial customs; The history of archaeological research in British Mandate Palestine, including the work of Flinders Petrie at Tell el-‘Ajjul, Tell Fara and Tell Jemmeh.
37. James Steele. Research interests include new modeling approaches in computational archaeology; cognitive evolution and cognitive archaeology; landscape characterization and environmental knowledge systems; and human osteology
38. Rhiannon Stevens. Investigating the influence of climate on past human societies and the interaction of humans with their environment; Reconstructing the diet of past human and animal population through bimolecular techniques; Extending and developing isotope analysis methodologies (C, N, O, Sr, etc) to improve interpretations and reconstructions; Investigating the effects of climate and physiology on animal body isotopic values (hair, teeth, bones, antler);Upper Palaeolithic Archaeology
39. Alice Stevenson. Museum collections and archives; histories of museums and archaeology; museum archaeology and anthropology; museum ethics; Heritage of the Middle East and Africa; archaeology of Predynastic Egypt and Nubia; burial rituals Dean Sully conservation as critical heritage practice; conservation of archaeological & anthropological objects and museum collections Conservation of built heritage and heritage places: People Centred Conservation of Nature and Culture Transcultural Heritage Practice Decolonising methodologies
40. Jeremy Tanner. Critical, sociologically informed, and comparative approaches to the art of the ancient world. Theories and methods for the analysis of art of past societies. Development of the concept of art as 'expressive symbolism' (derived from Talcott Parsons' Action Theory), through synthesis with structuralism, pragmatist semiotics (Peirce, Mead) and ethology, as well as Alfred Gell's account of the material agency of art. Comparative approaches to the art of complex societies, whether through genres and institutions (such as visual depictions of history, or portraiture), stylistic systems ('naturalism', spatial representation, perspective), or ancient critical texts on art (art theory, art history writing). Current research focuses on comparative approaches to ancient Greek and Roman and early imperial Chinese art. Reception and display of ancient art, in museums and other institutions, in the modern world.
41. David Wengrow. Comparative archaeology of the Middle East, North-East Africa, and Eastern Mediterranean; Early state formation; Cognitive and evolutionary approaches to culture; Prehistoric art and aesthetics; Intellectual and social history of archaeology and anthropology
42. Todd Whitelaw. Aegean archaeology; Method and theory; Landscape archaeology; Ethnoarchaeology; Complex societies; Settlement archaeology; Ceramics; Urbanisation
43. Tim Williams. Urbanism and complex societies along the Silk Roads; Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia and the Silk Roads; Management of archaeological sites, cultural routes and landscapes; Recording & analysis of complex stratigraphy, integration of complex data sets; EARTH: Earthen Archaeology Research, Theory and History
44. Karen Wright. Social organization; Archaeology of households and villages; Stone technologies: milling tools, vessels, beads, figurines; Beads, the body and social identity; Food preparation; Gender; The impact of urbanization and state formation on rural regions; Ancient texts and archaeology; Western Asia; Neolithic, chalcolithic, early Bronze Age
45. Yijie Zhuang. Geoarchaeology; Ecology of early agriculture; Long-term land use and landscape changes; Irrigation and Water management; diverse trajectories to social complexity; East, South and Southeast Asia.
General Statement:
The UCL Institute of Archaeology is one of the largest centres for archaeology, cultural heritage and museum studies in Britain. Founded in 1937, it is one of very few places in the world actively pursuing research on a global scale in the archaeological sciences, heritage studies and world archaeology. Based in the heart of London, and within 10 minutes walk of both the British Museum and the British Library, the Institute offers a comprehensive list of Masters degrees covering a diverse range of specialisms. The Institute is recognised for the excellence of its teaching and student experience, at graduate as well as undergraduate level, as reflected in numerous university league tables and National Student Survey results. Minimum entry requirements are a CGPA 3.3 or better, in a relevant degree. A GRE score is not required. The Institute’s Graduate body is made up of over 250 students from over 40 different countries . After UK students North American students are our largest co-hort, number around 50-70 students a year.
MA Programmes

MA in Archaeology
MA in Archaeology and Heritage of Asia
MA Archaeology and Heritage of Egypt and the Middle East
MA in Artefact Studies
MA in Cultural Heritage Studies
MA in Managing Archaeological Sites
MA in Mediterranean Archaeology
MA in Museum Studies
MA in Principles of Conservation
MA in Public Archaeology
MA in Research Methods for Archaeology
MSc programmes
MSc in Archaeological Science: Technology and Materials
MSc in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology
MSc in Computational Archaeology: GIS, Data Science and Complexity
MSc in Conservation for Archaeology and Museums (2 years)
MSc in Environmental Archaeology
MSc in Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology (joint degree with UCL Anthropology)

For More Information Contact:
Lisa Daniel, Graduate Admissions Administrator. UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom; phone: +44 (0)20 7679 7499; email:, daniel@ucl.ac.uk; Webpage: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/