Areas of research

Our research covers everything from contemporary questions about the role of materials in climate change and pollution, to the importance of stone axes in making the worlds of the first farmers in Britain 6,000 years ago.

Whether it is the processes of making Viking architecture or the way hunter gatherers in Borneo today engage with specific materials, our research seeks to identify how materials and humans work together, enable new kinds of practices and both create, and curtail, the possibilities of change.

Supported especially through a £1.8M AHRC Capability for Collections Grant, but drawing on the resources across the University, the Research Centre is building an expanded materials science capability which includes cutting-edge facilities in microwear analysis, alongside 3D scanning and printing, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Micro-XRF, portable-XRF and more.

Current projects

• A New History of Bronze (Principle Investigator: Rachel Crellin). Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, this project explores how a new understanding of bronze derived from microwear analysis can tell us about the the possibilities for crafting, leadership and violence in the Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland.
• ENDURE (Principal Investigator: Ben Jervis). Funded by UKRI (under the Horizon Guarantee scheme), the project explores how urban lifeways endured in the small towns of medieval England through the traumatic crises of the 14th century.
• Many New Worlds: A Century of Transformations in the Post-Columbian Caribbean (Principal Investigator: Alice Samson). Funded by the AHRC, Many New Worlds sets out to investigate how diverse communities experienced and created a radically new post-Columbian world in the Caribbean.