Historical Archaeology
Historical Archaeology is...
The University of Leicester has a long and distinguished record of teaching and researching Historical Archaeology. The School has one of the largest concentrations of expertise in the archaeology of historical periods in the UK. We take the view that historical archaeology is an approach to the past that combines different kinds of evidence, including material culture, landscape, texts, documents, art, architecture, maps, oral histories, environmental evidence and whatever other sources of evidence may be available. A particular feature of the School is the high level of integration between historical and archaeological approaches, particularly evident in our interdisciplinary research projects and our innovative MA courses.
Core Staff
Neil Christie, Deirdre O'Sullivan, Sarah Tarlow, Alasdair Brooks, Craig Cipolla, Richard Thomas, Ruth Young, Dave Edwards
Staff interests range in location from Australasia and South Asia through Europe and the Americas, and in time from the classical period to the modern world. The ancient historians’ research projects span from ancient texts via social history, administrative networks, geographical understandings of the world, political landscapes, rural and trading economies, identity formation, material culture. For the research interests of the Mediterranean archaeologists see the webpages on ‘Greek Archaeology’ and ‘Roman Archaeology’. Those historical archaeologists who work mainly on later historical periods (medieval and post-medieval) run the popular MA in Historical Archaeology (by distance learning or campus-based) and teach a range of options at undergraduate and post-graduate levels
Key Research Projects
- Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse
- The local impact of global economies: nineteenth-century ceramics in Venezuela
- Wallingford: burh to burrough
- Impact of Diasporas and the Making of Britain
In 2008 the School of Archaeology and Ancient History announced the launch of its Centre for Historical Archaeology
Publication highlights
Christie, N & Augenti, A. eds.) in press Urbes Extinctae. Approaches to Abandoned Classical Cities. Ashgate
Christie, N. 2011. The Fall of the Western Roman Empire. An Archaeological and Historical Perspective. Bloomsbury, London
Cipolla, C. 2008 Signs of identity, signs of memory, Archaeological Dialogues 15(2): 196-215.
Cipolla, C. 2012. Peopling the Place, Placing the People: An archaeology of Brothertown Discourse.
Edwards, D.N. 2011. Slavery and slaving in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Kingdoms of the Middle Nile, In P. Lane & K. MacDonald (eds) Slavery in Africa. Archaeology and Memory, (Proceedings of the British Academy 168), London: British Academy, 79-108.
Edwards, D. 2004. The Potential for Historical Archaeology in the Sudan, in L. Smith, P. Rose, G. Wahida & S. Wahida (eds) Fifty years in the Archaeology of Africa: themes in archaeological theory and practice. BIEA. pp. 13-33.
Edwards, D. 2003. ‘History, Archaeology and Nubian identities’. in P. Lane & A. Reid (eds.) African Historical Archaeologies. New York: Plenum. pp.33-58.
O'Sullivan, D. (2006) The ‘Little Dissolution’ of the 1520s, Post Medieval Archaeology 40 (ii) (2006) 1-32
O'Sullivan, D. (forthcoming 2012) "Becoming Ancient Ruins. Monastic Remains as ‘Facts on the Ground’" in Dudley, S. and Petrov, J. (eds.) Material Worlds Routledge: London and New York
Tarlow, S. 2011. Ritual, belief and the dead in early modern Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cherryson, Annia, Zoe Crossland and Sarah Tarlow (in press). The archaeology of death and burial in post-medieval Britain and Ireland. Leicester: Leicester Archaeological Monographs (Proofs available; due out October/ November 2011)
Tarlow, Sarah 2007. The Archaeology of Improvement: Britain 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, R. 2010. Translocated testudinidae: the earliest archaeological evidence for tortoises in Britain. Post-Medieval Archaeology 44/1: 165-171.
Thomas, R. 2009. Bones of contention: why later post-medieval assemblages of animal bones matter, pp. 133-148, in Horning, A. and Palmer, M. (eds.) Crossing Paths or Sharing Tracks: Future Directions in the Archaeological Study of Post-1550 Britain and Ireland. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer Ltd
Exploring Historical Archaeology at postgraduate level at Leicester
Historical archaeological approaches, data and theory are embedded strongly in our dedicated MA prgramme. Our expertise makes the School an ideal venue at which to pursue doctoral research in this field. PhDs on Historical Archaeology are undertaken by both campus-based study and Distance Learning, or a combination of modes. Recently completed PhD theses include Claire Strachan on workers' housing in the south-west of England, Delight Stone on gender relations among the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and ... Current students are exploring topics such as relationships between the British and Portuguese in the Newfoundland cod fisheries, urban housing and ideas of modernity, Quaker beliefs and the object biographies of Jamestown.
