Wolfson College, in conjunction with the School of Archaeology, offers a scholarship for students who will be studying for a DPhil in Archaeology at the University of Oxford in the academic year 2012 – 2013.

An exhibition hosted by the Institute of Archaeology  is to remember the experiences of refugees who sought shelter in Oxford during World War II.

Catch-up with the celebrations during the Institute's golden anniversary year by visiting our 50th anniversary page.  Please fill out the form on the page if you would like to keep in touch with the department.  We would like to hear from both alumni and friends alike and we plan to produce an anniversary booklet in early 2012.

Two members of the School of Archaeology (Professor Chris Bronk Ramsey and Dr Rick Schulting) are part of a major new research project titled ‘Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of Northeast Asia’.

This inter-disciplinary effort, headed by Professor Andrzej Weber of the University of Alberta, Canada, builds on his long-running project on hunter-gatherer adaptations around Lake Baikal, Siberia, and is being run in conjunction with Professor Hirofumi Kato of Hokkaido University, together with an international, multidisciplinary team of scholars. Taking a ‘life history’ approach, the main focus of the new research will be on human skeletal remains from the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, from earlier prehistoric Jomon populations to the proto-historic Ainu people of the modern era. Core funding for the project has been provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. A start-up meeting was recently held in Sapporo in July 2011, together with the first season of a new programme of excavations on an important mult-period shellmidden on Rebun Island. The project website is available at http://bhap.arts.ualberta.ca/. 

A new five-year project is announced today looking at the history of the English landscape from the middle Bronze Age to the Norman period. The English landscape of fields, trackways and settlements is an ancient one.  While much has changed over the 3,500 years since the agricultural landscape was laid out, surprising continuities exist. ‘The English Landscapes and Identities project’ will use a mass of mapped data for the period from the middle Bronze Age to the Domesday Book (AD1086) to explore continuities and changes in the use of the land in different parts of England

The results will be publicly available on a website to be called ‘A Portal to the Past’, which is being created by the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. The project with funding of €2 million from the ERC (European Research Council) will not only map the whole of England, but also allow the research team to collect and analyse huge amounts of digital data – on a scale never attempted before.

The five-year project, launched today, will take as its starting point the middle Bronze Age when a settled agricultural landscape was laid out in England for the first time. It will then chart changes under the Iron Age inhabitants, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, and up to the arrival of the Normans under William the Conqueror, who commissioned the famous Domesday Book of AD1086, a country-wide survey providing a wealth of information about life in England at the time.

English Heritage has used aerial photographs of over half of England showing ancient sites of interest and this will form the basis for the project.  Material will also be drawn from county archives, databases of ancient coins, and the Portable Antiquity Scheme (which records the archaeological finds made by metal detectors). Oxford researchers will also work with the British Museum, the Archaeology Data Service and local history experts with a good knowledge of the period to draw together the different regional histories and analyse what variations existed and why.

Hazel Down Lynchets: The Hampshire landscape has been cultivated for more than 4000 years. On Hazel Down (left) lynchets (field boundaries), probably of Late Bronze Age can be seen contrasted with modern agriculture. Credit: Ian R. Cartwright.

Principal investigator Professor Chris Gosden, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘England is extraordinary in the level of information about the ancient landscape. We want to discover what this huge database of information on ancient sites can reveal about England at a national level. Until now we have had fragments of information about landscape use during this period but this project allows us to form a bigger picture of overall patterns and regional variations within England.

‘Variety characterises the English landscape, with dispersed settlements in the south-west and north-west contrasting with more clustered settlements in the Midlands and elsewhere. The project will also provide the public for the first time with online access to a wealth of archaeological information about any part of England.’

Eighteen areas of the country have been picked out as case studies demonstrating how land was commonly used in the past. For example, in the Upper Thames Valley patterns of ancient field settlements are still evident in the landscape today. The researchers will also carry out new research to link distributions of metalwork and landscape forms.  In East Anglia a much metalwork was deposited by ancient communities and the researchers want to find out where on the landscape such deposits were made and whether this indicates that these were gifts to the gods or deposited for more pragmatic  reasons. 

Oxford University’s School of Archaeology is collaborating with the University’s e-Research Centre to create this ambitious website, providing access to maps and databases on artefacts. John Pybus from the e-Research Centre said: ‘We are developing software to allow people to query the huge mass of archaeological data out there. Our software should allow cross-referencing and an ability to map national patterns in land use on a scale never attempted before. This will allow for a new understanding of archaeology at a local and national level.’

The Portal to the Past website is expected to go live in 2014. It will be available through the University of Oxford School of Archaeology website.

A new approach using stable nitrogen and carbon isotope ratios in ancient crop remains suggests that early farmers practised manuring with dung from herded livestock.  These results have radical implications for understanding the ecology of early farming and its social consequences.

Sacks of ancient excrement from Herculaneum are helping archaeologists learn more about Roman life. The waste was excavated and put through a series of graded sieves by a team led by Mark Robinson of the University of Oxford which revealed bits of bone, pottery as well as nuts and seeds made it into Roman cesspits.

Miss Gertrud Seidmann, until recently a postgraduate in the School of Archaeology and believed to be the oldest student to have studied at Oxford University, has been awarded a Certificate of Graduate Attainment by the University in a special ceremony in the Divinity School.

Gertrud, who was born and educated in Vienna before emigrating to Britain in the 1930s, is a leading researcher on engraved gems and 18^th-century collectors.  Her doctoral research was well advanced when she was forced to abandon her research due to ill health at the age of 91.

The Oxford Centre for Asian Archaeology, Art and Culture, based in Oxford University’s School of Archaeology, has received its first major research award since its launch in October last year.

The Leverhulme Trust has awarded a grant of almost half a million pounds for the research project ‘China and Inner Asia (1,000-200 BC): Interactions that changed China’ to Professor Jessica Rawson.

More information about can be found at http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/system/html/11077_Stone_figures-1cadc130.jpg

Oxford University is to launch a new centre to study the archaeological and cultural heritage of Asia. On 21 October, the Oxford Centre for Asian Archaeology, Art and Culture, based in the University’s School of Archaeology, will officially open to become the only Asia-specialist centre of archaeological research and teaching in Europe.

Although Asia has some of the world’s richest archaeological and artistic forms of heritage, surprisingly little is known or taught about this period in Britain. Research and teaching will encompass all areas of Asia and cover the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) through to the historical period. Asia celebrates a huge diversity of cultures but less research has been conducted into how the different cultures are related. The new Centre will look at how the cultural influences, both within the region and in the wider world beyond, might be connected. The research will not only draw on archaeology but also other disciplines, such as anthropology, art history, linguistics, molecular genetics, the earth sciences and geography.

A research team reports new findings of stone age tools that suggest humans came "out of Africa" by land earlier than has been thought.

Dr Michael Petraglia, of Oxford University, and colleagues say stone artefacts found in the Arabian Peninsula and India point to an exodus starting about 70,000 to 80,000 years ago - and perhaps even earlier.

Radiocarbon dating has shown that the chronology of Egypt's Old, Middle and New Kingdoms is indeed accurate. The researchers dated seeds found in pharaohs' tombs, including some from the tomb of the King Tutankhamun.

Professor Christopher Ramsey, the lead author of the study said:  "For the first time, radiocarbon dating has become precise enough to constrain the history of ancient Egypt to very specific dates.  I think scholars and scientists will be glad to hear that our small team of researchers has independently corroborated a century of scholarship in just three years."

An article in the New Scientist magazine features Oxford University research into the Toba super-eruption, a supervolcano on the Indonesian island of Sumatra which erupted 74,000 years ago. It outlines the finds from archaeological digs in India, presented in February at a conference in Oxford, its effects, and how it shaped human evolution and migration.

It mentions research by several Oxford academics, including Dr Michael Petraglia who led the investigations and has overturned  previous research to conclude that, although after Toba was difficult for humans, it was not 'a catastrophic change'. Also refers to research carried out by Oxford researchers Peter Ditchfield, Michael Haslam and Stephen Oppenheimer into the impact on human populations, both before and after the super-eruption.

A 3,000 year old trading vessel has been found off the coast of Devon which provides fresh evidence about Britain's links with Europe during the Bronze Age. Further analysis on the cargo of the vessel is being carried out by academics from Oxford University.

Archaeologists believe the copper – and possibly the tin – was being imported into Britain and originated in a number of different countries throughout Europe, rather than from a single source, demonstrating the existence of a complex network of trade routes across the Continent.

Two new books on the Rock Art of the Drakensberg Bushmen have been published by Wits University Press and the Rock Art Research Institute.

PEOPLE OF THE ELAND: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a Reflection of their Life and Thought, by Patricia Vinnicombe

THE ELAND’S PEOPLE: New Perspectives on the Rock Art of the Maloti-Drakensberg Bushmen. Essays in Memory of Pat Vinnicombe, Edited by Peter Mitchell and Benjamin Smith

The launch will be held on Thursday, 26 November 2009, 6 pm at Venue The Eland Room, The Origins Centre, Wits University.

Human bones from Kents Cavern, Devon analysed by Dr Rick Schulting may show signs of cannibalism.