Archaeology and Ancient History

People and Places

How can we develop narratives of the past that embrace both people and landscapes? This theme explores all aspects of landscapes and personhood, from the social and cultural production of domestic space to large-scale demographic distributions, and from physical making (and unmaking) of human bodies to the social and cultural production of identities. By combining aspects of landscape archaeology and bioarchaeology this theme seeks to reveal broader patterns in past lived experiences. Within this theme, we have particular expertise in GIS, spatial analysis, and Ancient Greek and Roman geographic thought as well as gendered identities, mortuary archaeology, ancient biomolecular approaches, and archaeogenetics.

Core staff

Allison, Appleby, Barton, Christie, Crellin, Edwards, Harris, Haselgrove, Lennon, Masséglia, Merrills, O’Sullivan, Samson, Shipley, Stewart, Taylor, Tarlow, Thomas, Young

Key research projects

Recent publications

  • Appleby, J. 2017. ‘Ageing and the Body in Archaeology’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal: 1-19. 
  • Appleby, J., G.N. Rutty, S.V. Hainsworth, RC. Woosnam-Savage, B. Morgan, A. Brough 2014. ‘Peri-mortem skeletal trauma in Richard III: a skeletal analysis.’ The Lancet 385: 253-259.
  • Armit, I. 2012. Headhunting and the Body in Iron Age Europe. Cambridge University Press.
  • Crellin, R.J. 2017. ‘Changing Assemblages: tracing vibrant matter in burial assemblages’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27: 111-125.
  • Harlow, M. and Laurence, R., 2017. ‘Augustus Senex: Old Age and the Remaking of the Principate’. Greece and Rome 64: 115-131.
  • Harlow, M. (ed.) 2016. A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion. Volume 1. Antiquity. Bloomsbury.
  • Robb, J. and Harris, O.J.T. 2013. The Body in History: Europe from the Palaeolithic to the future. Cambridge University Press.
  • Robb, J. and Harris O.J.T. 2018. ‘Becoming gendered in European prehistory: was Neolithic gender fundamentally different?’ American Antiquity 83: 128-147
  • Masséglia, J. 2015. Body Language in Hellenistic Art and Society. Oxford University Press.
  • Masséglia, J. 2013. ‘Phrygians in relief: trends in self-representation’ in P. Thonemann (ed.) Roman Phrygia: Culture and Society. Cambridge University Press: 95-123
  • Allison, P. 2013. People and Space in Roman Military Bases. Cambridge University Press.
  • Armit, I. G.T. Swindles, K. Becker, G. Plunkett, M. Blaauw. 2014. ‘Rapid climate change did not cause population collapse at the end of the European Bronze Age’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Scicne of the United States of America 111 (48): 17045-17049.
  • Christie, N. and P. Diarte-Blasco (eds) 2018. Interpreting Transformations in Society and Landscapes in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Oxbow.
  • Christie, N., H Herold (eds) 2016. Fortified Settlements in Early Medieval Europe: Defended Communities of the 8th-10th Centuries. Oxbow.
  • Gillings, M. 2015. ‘Mapping invisibility: GIS approaches to the analysis of hiding and seclusion’, Journal of Archaeological Science 62: 1-14.
  • Gillings, M. and J. Pollard (eds). 2016. Landscape Archaeology. Routledge.
  • Gillings, G. and J. Pollard. 2016. ‘Making Megaliths: Shifting and Unstable Stones in the Neolithic of the Avebury Landscape’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 26: 537-559.
  • Merrils, A. 2017. Roman Geographies of the Nile. From the Late Republic to the Early Empire. Cambridge University Press.
  • Shipley, D.G.J. 2017. ‘Agis IV, Kleomenes III, and Spartan landscapes’. Historia, 66 (3): 281–97.
  • Shipley, D.G.J. 2011. Pseudo-Skylax’s Periplous: The Circumnavigation of the Inhabited World. Bristol Phoenix Press.bridge University Press: 95-123

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