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Our Outreach team takes archaeology workshops and talks out to schools and colleges in the county. It also runs Masterclasses and workshops on campus and in the department. We've also worked with the army on 
Prehistory
Prehistory is the study of the human past from the production of the first stone tools, 3.2 million years ago, until the modern era. Unlike other disciplines, prehistory does not have a rigidly defined time period. In Britain prehistory ends with the coming of the Roman army, while in Australia, the land was occupied by communities of hunter-gatherers at the time of European invasion, a mere 220 years ago. Historically Prehistory was defined as the subject of archaeology that concerned itself with preliterate societies, but practically it is more concerned with particular lifeways, primarily of hunters & gatherers and early agricultural societies, and of interpreting the character of those societies from the material culture and other traces left to us in the archaeological record.
At Leicester you will be exposed to the full reach of human prehistory from the earliest traces of human action in the archaeological record during the Lower Palaeolithic until Later Prehistory in Europe that includes Bronze and Iron Age agricultural societies. Recent major projects have included the AHRC-funded Avebury project. A specific current focus of research in the School and with ULAS centres on Iron Age settlement and change, along with contacts with Rome and transitions after Roman conquest. The School's Fieldschool project at Burrough Hill is key in such combined research.
Core Staff
Huw Barton; Mark Gillings; Colin Haselgrove; Terry Hopkinson; Jeremy Taylor; Marijke van der Veen; and Ian Whitbread.
Our staff have a wide range of research interests and period specialisms including the emergence of behavioural modernity; lithic technology; hunter-gatherer archaeology; the origins of agriculture; the British Iron Age; monumental landscapes of the Bronze Age; and geophysical approaches to landscape analysis.
Key Research Projects
- Bosnian Palaeolithic
- Cultured Rainforest Project
- Tracing Networks - Mint Condition
- British and Irish Prehistory in their European Context
- Miniliths of Exmoor
- Burrough Hill, Leicester
Publication Highlights
Barton, H., Piper, P.J, Rabett, R., and Reeds, I. (2009) Composite hunting technologies from the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene, Niah Cave, Borneo, Journal of Archaeological Science 36: 1708-1714.
Barton, H. (2009) The social landscape of rice within vegecultural systems in Borneo. Current Anthropology 50(5): 673-676.
Gillings, M. (2010) Chorography, phenomenology and the antiquarian tradition (2010) Cambridge Journal of Archaeology 21(1).
Gillings, M., Pollard, J., Wheatley, D. & Peterson, R. (2008) Landscape of the Megaliths. Oxford, Oxbow.
Haselgrove, C. and T. Moore (eds) (2007) The later Iron Age in Britain and beyond. Oxford, Oxbow.
Haselgrove, C. and R. Pope (eds) (2007) The earlier Iron Age in Britain and the near Continent. Oxford, Oxbow.
Hopkinson, T. (2007) The Middle Palaeolithic Leaf Points of Europe: Ecology, Knowledge and Scale. BAR International Series 1663. Oxford: John and Erica Hedges Publishing.
Van der Veen, M. (ed) (2010) Agricultural Innovation (World Archaeology, 42.1).
Van der Veen, M. 2010. Plant remains from Zinkekra - early evidence for oasis agriculture. In D. J. Mattingly (ed.) The Archaeology of Fazzan. Vol. 3: Excavations of C. M. Daniels. London: Society for Libyan Studies, Department of Antiquities, pp. 489-519.
Exploring Prehistory at postgraduate level at Leicester
We welcome applications from UK, EU and International students for doctoral research with the School. PhDs on topics in Prehistory can be undertaken by both campus-based study and Distance Learning, or a blend of the two. The School is very proud of its record in completing some excellent dissertations by Distance Learning including, Subsistence patterning of Prehistoric Coastal California (Judith Porcasi); Colonizer Geoarchaeology of the Pacific Northwest Region, North America (Brett Lenz); Rejuvination and life history in Great Basin Projectile points (Al Spencer). Some recent and current campus based PhD students include: Creating and Negotiating Identity in a Changing World: Late Iron Age Brooches in Northern France (Melissa Edgar); At the edge of empire: the exchange and deposition of Iron Age metalwork in the East Midlands (Julia Farley); Using radiocarbon to (re)write the history of later Iron Age settlement in northeast England and beyond (Derek Hamilton).
