Dr Neil Christie
Reader in Archaeology
B.A., Ph.D. (Newcastle Upon Tyne), FSA
Tel: 0116 2522617
Email: njc10@le.ac.uk
Prior to joining the Archaeology and Ancient History team at the University of Leicester way back in 1992, I was both an undergraduate and then doctoral student in Archaeology at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne; subsequently I held a Scholarship at the British School at Rome and then was employed there to prepare a major excavation report for publication (Santa Cornelia). I returned to Newcastle as Sir James Knott Fellow (to research late Roman Italy), and then held a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship with the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford to work on a volume on the Lombards.
Since 1992 I have duly risen in the ranks at Leicester to Senior Lecturer and now to Reader in Archaeology. Among my current administrative duties in the School I am the Postgraduate (Research) Tutor overseeing all research postgraduates and editor to the School Bulletin.
Beyond Leicester I am Reviews Editor for the journal Medieval Archaeology and Hon Secretary for the Medieval Settlement Research Group and Reviews Editor for their journal.
Research
My main research areas cover late Roman to medieval archaeology, with a special interest in the late Roman Empire, in Italy and in urbanism, plus in areas such as castle formation, and church archaeology.
I am very much active in fieldwork with projects in Italy (currently with Denis Sami at Cesenatico between Rimini and Ravenna; and since Sept 2011 at the San Martino hilltop site near Tenno near the north end of lake Garda) and, most recently (2008-2010), in England at the late Saxon and Norman town of Wallingford in south Oxfordshire, where we used,
in a three-year AHRC funded project, an array of techniques to tease out the plan and contents of the site from its late Saxon roots through Norman castle building to later medieval decline - see below under my 'Research Interests' page and at:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/research/projects/wallingford
Teaching
I teach on various courses at all levels of undergraduate degrees in Archaeology and in Ancient History and on Masters courses. My main Year 1 teaching is 'Introduction to World Archaeology AD'; in Year 2 'Living in Towns: Medieval to early Modern Archaeology and Approaches'; and in Year 3 'Early Christian Europe'. I have overseen the MA in Archaeology and Landscape History and contribute to the MAs in Archaeology and Roman Archaeology, both campus-based and by distance learning.
PhD supervision
I have overseen a high number of PhDs at Leicester - all successful, and with many of my former supervisees having gone onto their own high academic positions. Recent completed PhDs include: Denis Sami - Church and Economy in Byzantine Sicily; Michael Hawkes - Late Roman and Early Medieval Leicestershire; Matilda Holmes - Foodways in Saxon England. Current PhD students include: Chantal Bielmann - Church, Society and identity in Late Antique and Early Medieval Switzerland and Claudia Eicher - Religious conversion and social and settlement change in late antique central Gaul.
Do contact me if interested in pursuing a topic in my field (see link above on 'Research Interests').
Selected Recent Publications
(edited, with Andrea Augenti), Vrbes Extinctae: Archaeologies of Abandoned Classical Towns Ashgate, Farnham, 2012 (424 pp).
Medieval Rural Settlement. Britain and Ireland, AD 800-1600, edited N. Christie & P. Stamper. Oxbow Books/Windgather, Oxford, 2011 (369 pp). For flier for this and a related volume, click here
The Fall of the Western Roman Empire. An Archaeological and Historical Perspective. Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2011 (306pp) For a mini summary of the volume on the University's News, click here
From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy, AD300-800. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006 (598pp)
(with P Beavitt, J Gisbert Santonja, J Segui, V Gil Senis) Ethnography and Archaeology in Upland Mediterranean Spain. Manolo’s World: Peopling the Recent Past in the Serra de L’Altmirant, 1994-98, Leicester Archaeology Monograph, 12, Leicester 2004. (194pp)
(editor) Landscapes of Change. Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Ashgate, Aldershot 2004. (324pp)
(edited with S Loseby) Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Scolar Press, London 1996. (318pp)
