Historical Archaeology BA

Gain an overview of prehistoric archaeology through global case studies.

We’ll be covering the latest debate and scholarship, on topics such as:

• Human dispersal
• Technology
• Environmental change
• Food procurement and production
• Monumentality
• Sedentism and urbanisation

By the end of the module, you’ll understand the broad chronological development and key themes in Prehistory, up to the development of writing.

You will also have an appreciation of archaeological approaches in prehistoric periods, and the complexities of integrating varied sources of archaeological evidence including landscapes, monuments, excavated evidence and material culture.

This module is worth 10 credits.

Explore Greek and Roman art, from the Bronze Age to the end of the Roman Empire (roughly 1600 BC to AD 400). We will consider classic sites and monuments that are among the great lasting achievements of mankind, including the Parthenon, Trajan’s Column and the statue of Augustus of Prima Porta.

You will learn how to look at works of art and artefacts from the ancient world. This includes how to describe, explain and analyse them. As a result, you will unlock the meanings of these images and monuments for the people who made, commissioned and looked at them.

You will build a thorough understanding of the key contexts and media of ancient art and archaeology. This includes:

• sculpture
• vase-painting
• coins
• mosaics
• architecture and urban structures

We will cover the Greek world in the autumn semester, and the Roman world in the spring semester. Rather than working chronologically, the material on this module is organised by media and contexts (topography, sculpture, vase painting, temples, tombs, houses etc.) This gives you a grasp of formal and stylistic developments within each of these media through the centuries, helping you understand their meanings in their original contexts.

This module is worth 20 credits.

"'Interpreting Ancient Art and Archaeology', which was a first-year module, is by far my favourite. You spend the first semester doing Greek art. You progress from the earliest Greek art, to when the Romans conquered them. Then in the spring semester, you do Roman art from beginning to the end and talk about all the different periods. It was interesting for me, as you got to do a presentation on a specific piece of art. It was really fun." - Hannah Parker, second-year Classical Civilisation

 

This module gives an overview of the archaeology of the British Isles, from the Roman invasion until the industrial revolution.

This was a period of dramatic change in Britain. Using key sites and discoveries, you will be introduced to the challenges of understanding the archaeology of periods partially documented in textual sources.

You will study:

• The Roman invasion and military and civilian life in the Roman province of Britannia
• Anglo-Saxon and Viking incursions and settlement
• Medieval castles, towns and monasteries
• The impact of the Reformation and the growth of the Tudor state
• The role of industry and urbanisation in the making of modern Britain

Teaching is delivered in a mix of lectures, seminars and a museum session. On average, this will be two hours per week across the spring semester.

This module is worth 10 credits.

Archaeologists are interested in all aspects of the human past. This includes everything from ancient landscapes and changing environments, buried settlements and standing monuments and structures, to material objects and evidence for diet, trade, ritual and social life.

This module introduces the discipline of archaeology. It also explores how material remains are discovered, analysed and used to provide evidence for human societies, from prehistory to the present day.

The autumn semester introduces the historical development of archaeology. This is followed by a presentation of current theory and practice in the areas of:

• archaeological prospection and survey
• excavation and post-excavation analysis
• relative and absolute dating
• the study of archaeological artefacts
• frameworks of social interpretation

In the spring semester, you will be taken into the field to gain practical experience of core archaeological methods in field survey and buildings archaeology.

This module is worth 20 credits.

"'Understanding the Past I' has probably been my favourite module so far. We were given a sheet of data and finds on the site and asked to map it out and give our interpretations of what it was and calibrate the dates. We started off with the bare minimum and you’ve just got to build up this database and I found it really interesting. Problem-solving – it was really fun." - Emily LeHegarat, first-year Archaeology

This module builds on Understanding the Past I. It is an introduction to the core aims and methodologies of Archaeology as a discipline. It provides a basic introduction to how material remains of the past are discovered, analysed and used to provide evidence for human societies, from prehistory to the present day.

Through lectures, classroom activities and practical fieldwork, you will be introduced to the study of landscape and the built environment, looking at how the archaeological record is both created and investigated.

You will be taken into the field to gain practical experience of core archaeological methods in field survey and buildings archaeology. One of the locations you will visit is Wollaton Hall, the Elizabethan house and landscape park that's nearby to University Park campus.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Explore the real stories behind key sites and discoveries in the history of archaeology.

Taking a broadly chronological approach, we touch upon key finds from the earliest phases of human evolution to the Middle Ages. Each lecture focusses on a major site of scientific discovery or excavation that has fundamentally altered previously held interpretations of the past. This might include Pompeii, Sparta, Sutton Hoo or Palmyra.

You will also examine the personalities and ideologies that have shaped archaeology, noting how changing perspectives on gender, ethnicity and class have in turn formed ideas about the past and its material remains.

We also consider to what extent archaeology is used, abused, or misused in the modern world. So, if you'd like to learn how archaeology became the subject it is, and how it remains very much relevant to the present day, then this is the module for you!

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module introduces the interpretation of ancient Greek and Roman myth, focussing on a representative range of texts and themes.

The module will be team-taught, exposing you to a wide range of material and approaches to the use of myth in the ancient world.

We will consider how mythology is used in:

• ancient literature, such as epic and drama
• historical texts
• religious contexts
• the material culture of the ancient world, such as statuary, paintings and sarcophagi

We will also introduce the variety of methodologies that scholars have used over the years, to help interpret and understand these myths and their usages.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This year-long module is devoted to the history of the ancient world. You will investigate some of its key themes and approaches through a series of historical case studies, covering major periods of Greek and Roman history.

You will explore:

• What do we know (and not know) about the ancient world?
• How do ancient politics, society, culture and morality differ from our own?
• What evidence informs us about the ancient world? What are its limits and pitfalls?
• How do modern concerns influence academic debates about the ancient world, and the views of individual scholars?
• How far can we hope to know ‘how things really were’ in the ancient world?

This module is worth 20 credits.

Gain a wide-ranging interdisciplinary introduction to the history, literature and culture of the ancient Greek World. Covering from c.1600-31 BC, you will explore Greek history from the Mycenaean period to the coming of Rome.

You will:

• Examine the major topics in Greek history – from the Mycenaean Period and the Dark Ages, through the rise of the polis in the Archaic period, to the height of Greek civilisation in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, and finally its conquest by the Roman Empire
• Explore primary evidence from Greek literary and material culture
• Consider the relationship between ancient Greece and the modern world

This module is followed by the Studying the Roman World module, in the spring semester. No prior knowledge of Greek history or Greek language is needed.

This module is worth 10 credits.

This module gives a wide-ranging interdisciplinary introduction to the history, literature and art of the Roman world. We will explore from the beginnings of the city of Rome, to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

You will:

• examine the major chapters of Rome's history – such as the Roman Republic, the rise of the empire, the establishment of the Principate, and the fall of Rome
• discover coinciding developments in Roman literary and artistic culture
• consider the reception of ancient Rome in modern western culture

We will also examine the relationship of the Roman world to the Greek world. This will complement the autumn semester module, Studying the Greek World, by continuing training in a number of basic study skills. No prior knowledge of the Roman world is needed.

This module is worth 10 credits.

Explore art and architecture from the Renaissance to the Age of Revolutions (c.1789).

• Discuss individual artists and works and set them within their historical contexts.
• Question how changing forms of art relate to their social, political and philosophical contexts.
• Examine the interplay of individual and collective ideas, practices, and institutions.
• Think about how contextual study can be married to visual analysis.

Philosophy develops, confronts and destroys previous thinking. It reinforces the status quo and acts as a foundation for revolution. It's a product of its time and helps to shape the future.

Together we'll become familiar with some of the main philosophical ideas and thinkers that have shaped philosophy. And you'll come to understand how and why these ideas arose and developed in response to wider contexts and movements.

Influential thinkers might include:

• Plato and Aristotle
• Ibn-Tufayl and Ibn-Rushd
• Montaigne, Locke and Wollstonecraft
• Marx and Gandhi
• Fanon, Sartre and de Beauvoir
• Murdoch

Particular topics might include:

• ancient Greek conceptions of the good life
• reason and tradition in classical Islamic philosophy
• medieval philosophy
• existentialism
• Afro-Caribbean philosophy

You won't be taught whether any of these thinkers and thoughts were right. But by the end of the module you'll be able to recognise and judge for yourself the strengths and weaknesses of arguments on both sides of each philosophical issue.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module examines the history of immigration to the United States from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. We trace the making and remaking of immigrant communities, cultures, and identities from the nineteenth century to the present day. You will analyse models of race, ethnicity, culture, and nation by focusing on the perception and reception of immigrant groups and their adjustment to US society. We will ask questions such as: How have institutions and ideologies shaped the changing place of immigrants within the United States over time? How have immigrants forged new identities within and beyond the framework of the nation state? And how has immigration transformed US society?

This module examines the narrative and textual foundations of the Islamic tradition including the Qur'an, the prophetic tradition and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. You’ll also look at the development and structure of Islamic society, law, doctrine and spirituality through the classical period, and Muslim responses to challenges posed by modernity including questions of gender and the nation state.

Did you know you can learn a language alongside your undergraduate degree? You could even gain credits that count towards your studies.

Whether you’re interested in opening up career opportunities around the world, giving your studies a boost by gaining access to research in other languages or simply planning to travel after your studies, developing foreign language skills will help you stand out from the crowd.

We offer nine languages and you can start as a beginner or at a more advanced level.

• Arabic
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Mandarin Chinese
• Russian
• Spanish

You may also choose from the following foreign language-related modules:  

• Language and Language Learning
• Culture of Arabic Language
• Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages
• Exploring Intercultural Awareness  

Find out more about learning a language alongside your degree 

This module engages with the narrative histories of film and television, from their origins to the present day, a period involving many significant transitional moments in production histories. You will explore the coming of sound, the rise and demise of the Hollywood studio system, and the emergence of the TV network system. By raising questions such as: what are the industries producing at these moments, and how are cultural products marketed and distributed? this module also asks what transition means at different historical moments. It provides examples of different critical approaches to film and television history and interrogates the key debates around the periodisation of that history. This module is worth 20 credits.

Archaeological knowledge is built through analysing material remains. We then use theory to create research questions, building interpretations of those remains. Together, these two elements act as evidence for societies in the past and present.

In this module, you will focus on the relationship between concepts, interpretive approaches and analytical frameworks in the design and implementation of archaeological research projects.

We introduce the development of archaeological theory and interpretation. Special attention is given to the paradigms put forward over the last 30 years, and the resulting debates.

Topics include:

• uniformitarianism
• ethnography
• typology
• ‘New Archaeology’
• processualism and post-processualism
• economic archaeology
• neo-Marxist paradigms

You will develop your knowledge further through in-depth studies of key issues and themes. You will also explore archaeological research in a wide range of different areas and projects.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Get creative and build your knowledge on an aspect of Classics or Archaeology which interests you.

Your aim in this module is to communicate your chosen topic to the general public. How you choose to do that is entirely up to you. You might explore different types of writing, perhaps for children or in the style of a magazine, or you might experiment with a different medium of communication, such as video, website or phone app.

For example, past students have:

• Created a museum exhibition
• Reconstructed an ancient artefact
• Designed a new public engagement strategy for a historic site
• Developed a board game
• Created a marketing campaign

The module convenor will support you to design an appropriate topic and format for your project.

You will develop vital research, project design and communication skills, which are excellent preparation for a range of careers, as well as your third-year dissertation.

This module is worth 20 credits.

“I designed several T-shirts and hoodies which conveyed information about the site’s art and architecture, history, and its eventual ruination by ISIL in 2015. I wanted to combine my interest of fashion with my love for the classical world, and this project gave me the opportunity to do so.”

- Alexander Gadd, Created a clothing brand based on Palmyra 

Read more student experiences about this module

This module examines Britain in the later-Roman Empire. It is a fascinating period of prosperity, integration, and sophistication. Yet it is also marked by rebellion, civil war, and the sundering of the links that had bound Britain to the continent so deeply for so long.

We will cover from the crisis that marked the middle years of the 3rd century, to the disappearance of Roman power in the early 5th, and the rapid economic collapse and social transformation that followed.

You will take an interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological and historical evidence, and will be expected to familiarise yourself with a wide range of evidence.

We will examine:

• the political framework of the later-Roman Empire
• the textual and archaeological evidence for Britain’s society and economy
• the barbarian peoples who threatened and interacted with it
• the question of how it ended up leaving the Roman Empire

You will also consider the integration of different types of source material, thinking about Britain’s place in the wider world in a broader context.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Explore archaeological evidence from a time of significant social, political, economic and climate change, which laid the foundations of the modern world. 

We'll focus on the development of European societies around the Mediterranean, Africa and across Eurasia in the medieval period. You will study the:

• Transformation of European and Mediterranean landscapes and settlement patterns, from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance
• Towns of western Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic world
• Impact of climate change, epidemic disease and population growth
• Rise of kingdoms, states and empires
• Development of nearly global trade networks in Europe, Africa and Asia, resulting in permanent European settlement in the Americas

Your lectures and seminars consider interdisciplinary approaches to these topics. They will also consider what they can tell us about social and economic change, ideologies and social identities over 1000 years of human history.

The teaching on climate, societal and economic change, is driven from the module tutor's European ice-core research, which gained national media coverage. You can also benefit from hands-on learning, using the Medieval European collections at our on-site Archaeology Museum.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module considers the archaeology of England from the end of the Roman occupation until the Norman conquest. You will explore the question of the Romano-British survival and the formation of new Anglo-Saxon societies, evidence of pagan beliefs and the conversion to Christianity; on the development of town and rural settlement patterns, on the role of the church in society and on the Viking incursions and Danish impact on England. 

This is a discipline-bridging cross-campus module, involving colleagues from across the School of Humanities.

The Silk Road will be presented as a range of archaeological, historical and scientific themes. Broad cultural themes will be balanced with the presentation of specific case studies, such as:

• The definitions of the Silk Roads
• Byzantine, Islamic and later medieval Silk Roads
• Luxury production
• Trade and exchange from the Roman and later periods
• Ming Dynasty links with the West

Scientific techniques for the analysis of materials, and their role in the interpretation of trade and exchange along the Silk Roads, will also be considered. This could be between, for example, China, central Asia, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module is designed to develop your skills of research, analysis and written presentation as preparation for a third year dissertation in classical civilisation. You will write a 5,000 word essay chosen from a range of topics, each focusing on a single piece of ancient source material. You will be provided with a topic for investigation, starter bibliography and tips on how to approach the question. The questions will suggest a range of possible approaches, from evaluation of historical source material to exploration of literary effects, relationships with other material, discussion of context or reception. For this module you will have a mixture of lectures and four 2-hour seminars over a period of 10 weeks.

This module aims to show how data can be drawn together from multiple sources to highlight closely interwoven human-(non-human)animal-landscape relationships.

As these are often indivisible, in reality if not worldview, the themes studied in this course would allow for a nuanced understanding of past societies but also a critical reflection of our own interactions.

The periods and contents covered in this module can be tailored to fit your individual interests, teaching and research needs. You will produce original course content and make positive contributions to seminar discussions.

This module is worth 20 credits.

What can we learn from the human skeleton? How can we tell the stories of past people from their bones?

In this module, you will handle real archaeological skeletons and learn how to identify their age, sex, stature and pathologies, and how we can reconstruct past populations from burial evidence.

We also take a fieldtrip to one of Nottingham’s oldest and largest cemeteries, to see who is was buried there and the type of monuments they received.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Religion was central to all aspects of Roman life, but did the Romans really 'believe'?

This module explores the traditions and rituals that operated in Roman society, from the earliest stages of archaic Rome, to the advent of Christianity. It will help you to make sense of customs and practices that could baffle even the Romans themselves, alongside showing how the religious system controlled Roman social, political and military activities.

You will examine evidence drawn from the late Republic and early Principate, and use literature and images from the Augustan period as a central hinge for studying the dynamics of religion in Rome.

Topics covered include:

• The definition of 'religion' and comparative studies
• Early Rome and the origins of religion
• The calendar temples and other religious buildings
• Priesthoods and politics
• Sacrifice
• The deification of the emperor
• Foreign cults in Rome
• The supposed 'decline of religion'
• Early Christianity

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module introduces the archaeology of the Mycenaean world. It will familiarise you with the achievements and material culture of one of the greatest European Bronze Age civilizations of the second millennium BC. This will be through discussing the historical, social, cultural and economic context of the period.

You will explore:

• The world of the Mycenaean palaces and citadels, their towns and trading ports
• Warfare
• Religion and cult activities
• Mortuary practices and ancestor worship

We also consider their wider connections across the Mediterranean world.

This module is worth 20 credits.

In the early 20th century, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans’s excavations at the site of Knossos on the island of Crete uncovered the remains of the earliest palatial civilisation in Europe. Knossos, the home of the mythical king Minos and the monstrous Minotaur, became the landmark of a new culture termed as ‘Minoan’.

Based on a combination of lectures and workshops, this module introduces students to the origins of the Aegean complex societies from the late 4th millennium BC and to the rise, apogee and fall of the Minoan palatial, state-level societies of the 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC. 

When Rome was still a small town, and before Athens became a city of international significance, the Etruscan civilisation flourished in Italy and rapidly gained control of the Mediterranean.

But who were the Etruscans? The Greeks and the Romans regarded them as wealthy pirates, renowned for their luxurious and extravagant lifestyle and for the freedom of their women. Archaeology, however, tells us much more about their daily life and funerary customs, their religious beliefs, their economy, their language, and their technical abilities and artistic tastes.

In this module, you will examine visual and material culture, as well as epigraphic and literary sources, in order to lift the shroud of mystery that often surrounds the Etruscans. You will also place them in the context of the wider Mediterranean world in the 1st millennium BC, examining their exchanges with the Near Eastern kingdoms, their cultural interactions with Greece and the Greek colonial world, and their role in the early history of Rome.

By exploring Etruscan cities and cemeteries from the 9th to the 3rd centuries BC, with their complex infrastructures and technologies, lavish paintings, sculptures and metalwork, you will discover a most advanced civilisation that shared much with the classical cultures and yet was very different from them.

This module is worth 20 credits.

You will critically examine themes in Near Eastern Prehistory. The themes take you from the development of agriculture, pastoralism and sedentism to the appearance of the first cities, states and writing. Drawing directly from current research, you will use case studies to examine these themes. You will use archaeological evidence to understand how these developments are reflected in social, religious, economic and political organisations of the prehistoric Near East. You will attend weekly lectures and seminars. After appropriate guidance, you will take part in learning activities includes:

• setting readings
• presenting
• running classroom discussions.

You will receive feedback on these participatory activities. You will write an essay for your formal assessment.

Ancient glass is a unique and beautiful translucent material. Since it was invented some 5000 years ago, it has been used for everything from luxurious and decorative objects, to vessels and containers for traded liquids, to coloured windows used in medieval churches and cathedrals.

On this module, you will explore how glass:

• is made from raw materials
• was coloured and decorated
• was used in a variety of functional and ritual contexts, from the Bronze Age to the medieval period

We bring together socio-cultural and scientific perspectives, to show how scientific analysis sheds light on glass technology, trade and provenance. During practical sessions, you will handle ancient glass and try out some of the techniques for yourself.

This module is worth 20 credits.

The early modern period witnessed the birth of commodity culture and the transformation of the relationship between people and their material world.

Expanding global trade networks and early colonial encounters brought a range of exotic products into early modern homes, including spices, sugar, tea, tobacco, cotton, porcelain and mahogany, while the rise of capitalism and industrialisation revolutionised the manufacture and availability of necessities and luxuries across the social spectrum.

The richness of this ‘new world of goods’ had profound consequences, transforming patterns of consumption, introducing new understandings of scientific knowledge and cultural production, and reshaping social identities and relationships based on class, gender and race.   

This module takes advantage of a sweep of new interdisciplinary perspectives across a range of subject areas, including social, economic and cultural history, archaeology, anthropology and art history, which have focused on the role and significance of early modern ‘things’.

You will gain a grounding of central themes in early modern history, as well as a deeper understanding of the importance of looking at early modern Europe as part of a globalising world. You will explore a range of textual sources including wills and inventories, account books, letters and diaries which tell us about expanding global connections, what people consumed and how they thought about their objects.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module introduces you to cultural and historical geography, including the:

• development of cultural and historical geography as sub-disciplines
• key thematic areas of contemporary cultural and historical geography, including landscape, identity, culture, power and knowledge 
• theoretical underpinnings of cultural and historical geography 
• links between cultural and historical geography and other fields of enquiry in the humanities and social sciences 
• methods and sources used in cultural and historical geographical research, including archives, texts and images, and field study 
• work of key figures from the sub-disciplines past and present

Discover the environmental history of the Western World over the past two centuries. The great nature-people stories that have shaped who we are today.

You will examine the history of environmental ideas and our changing and complex attitudes to animals and nature, alongside the history of human impacts on the environment. We will use the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain as case studies. Ultimately, we ask, can environmental history save the world in the 21st century?

Topics include:

• species history and the rewilding debate
• the rise of environmental protection groups
• the role of the state in environmental protection
• the history of pollution and pesticide use
• the National Park movement
• the Nature Reserve and the rise of outdoor leisure and recreation
• the emergence of modern environmentalism and campaigning
• the role of wildlife television and natural history film-making

This module is a must for anyone wanting to pursue a career in the environmental sector.

This module is worth 20 credits

Our images of Vikings come largely from the Icelandic sagas. These present a Viking Age of daring exploits, global exploration and bloody feuds, as carried out by valiant warriors and feisty women. But how accurate are the sagas when it comes to understanding what really happened in the Viking Age? Can they provide an insight into the Viking mind?

This module explores Norse and Viking cultural history, using an interdisciplinary approach grounded in the study of texts. 

Topics covered include:

• The Viking Age and Viking society
• Exploration and diaspora
• Gender, marriage and family
• Religion and belief
• Outlaws
• Poetry
• The supernatural

Your one-hour lectures will provide the evidence base for discussion in the two-hour, student-led seminars. The seminars also include some language work.

Assessment for this module is by a one-hour exam of comment and analysis, and a 3000-word project on a topic of your choice in consultation with a tutor.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module will introduce you to original archaeological research. It provides you with an opportunity to undertake and write up your own substantial piece of work on an approved topic, under the supervision of an academic member of staff.

For this project, you will work in a way similar to an academic archaeologist, which includes:

• identifying a suitable research topic
• critically evaluating the issues relating to the subject area
• sustaining a coherent and cogent argument.

This undertaking will involve the culmination of the range of core practical and interpretative skills acquired during the first two years of the course.

The below are examples of recent archaeology dissertation topics:

• Skeletal trauma in the Danelaw
• Gender in Viking Age burials
• Archaeology of beauty and cosmetics in Ancient Egypt
• Chinese glass
• Faunal analysis: can we dismiss unstratified material?
• Execution cemeteries: an Anglo-Saxon and Norman comparison
• Analysis of crouch burials
• Georgian architecture and power
• Constructing identities in early medieval Europe through cemetery evidence
• How did medieval England’s punishment compare to punishment in France?

Classics dissertation topics:

• Kingship in the Iliad
• The Huns as ‘barbarians’: identity in Ammianus Marcellinus
• Portrayal of the elderly in Hellenistic sculpture
• Myths and monsters in early Greek art
• Ancient magic in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• The changing presentation of imperial women from AD 284-330
• Huns, Picts, vandals and goths as ‘barbarians’
• Comparison of Athenian and Persian 5th Century BC art
• The impact of imagery of Alexander the Great on the Augustan period

This module examines Britain in the later-Roman Empire. It is a fascinating period of prosperity, integration, and sophistication. Yet it is also marked by rebellion, civil war, and the sundering of the links that had bound Britain to the continent so deeply for so long.

We will cover from the crisis that marked the middle years of the 3rd century, to the disappearance of Roman power in the early 5th, and the rapid economic collapse and social transformation that followed.

You will take an interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological and historical evidence, and will be expected to familiarise yourself with a wide range of evidence.

We will examine:

• the political framework of the later-Roman Empire
• the textual and archaeological evidence for Britain’s society and economy
• the barbarian peoples who threatened and interacted with it
• the question of how it ended up leaving the Roman Empire

You will also consider the integration of different types of source material, thinking about Britain’s place in the wider world in a broader context.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module considers the archaeology of England from the end of the Roman occupation until the Norman conquest. You will explore the question of the Romano-British survival and the formation of new Anglo-Saxon societies, evidence of pagan beliefs and the conversion to Christianity; on the development of town and rural settlement patterns, on the role of the church in society and on the Viking incursions and Danish impact on England. 

This is a discipline-bridging cross-campus module, involving colleagues from across the School of Humanities.

The Silk Road will be presented as a range of archaeological, historical and scientific themes. Broad cultural themes will be balanced with the presentation of specific case studies, such as:

• The definitions of the Silk Roads
• Byzantine, Islamic and later medieval Silk Roads
• Luxury production
• Trade and exchange from the Roman and later periods
• Ming Dynasty links with the West

Scientific techniques for the analysis of materials, and their role in the interpretation of trade and exchange along the Silk Roads, will also be considered. This could be between, for example, China, central Asia, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module is designed to develop your skills of research, analysis and written presentation as preparation for a third year dissertation in classical civilisation. You will write a 5,000 word essay chosen from a range of topics, each focusing on a single piece of ancient source material. You will be provided with a topic for investigation, starter bibliography and tips on how to approach the question. The questions will suggest a range of possible approaches, from evaluation of historical source material to exploration of literary effects, relationships with other material, discussion of context or reception. For this module you will have a mixture of lectures and four 2-hour seminars over a period of 10 weeks.

This module focuses on the variety of local cults and cultures in the Near East (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan) under Roman rule. We will zoom in on a number of localities in order to look at social, cultural and religious interactions between Greeks, Romans, Jews, Arabs and various other local cultures through literary, epigraphic, visual and archaeological evidence. In the great urban centres such as Palmyra, Tyre, Damascus, we will observe the adoption of the trappings of Graeco-Roman urbanism and public life (from peristyle temples to honorific statues) and their significance within the Second Sophistic.

On the other hand, we will explore alternative “pockets” of non-Hellenisation such as the lava lands of southern Syria with their distinct style of art and architecture in black basalt. ‘Oriental’ gods feature prominently in this module: We will explore their great sanctuaries (Temple of Jupiter at Heliopolis-Baalbek, Temple of Bel at Palmyra, Temple of Zeus at Damascus) in terms of architecture and ritual, and investigate their iconographies (Jupiter Heliopolitanus, Bel, Baalshamin, Atargatis of Hierapolis and myriads of other local gods). In contrast to Judaism and Christianity, there is a colossal lack of literary sources for these gods, and as a consequence, our understanding of their function and character hinges on how their worshippers depicted them in reliefs, statues, figurines and paintings.

What can we learn from the human skeleton? How can we tell the stories of past people from their bones?

In this module, you will handle real archaeological skeletons and learn how to identify their age, sex, stature and pathologies, and how we can reconstruct past populations from burial evidence.

We also take a fieldtrip to one of Nottingham’s oldest and largest cemeteries, to see who is was buried there and the type of monuments they received.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Explore archaeological evidence from a time of significant social, political, economic and climate change, which laid the foundations of the modern world. 

We'll focus on the development of European societies around the Mediterranean, Africa and across Eurasia in the medieval period. You will study the:

• Transformation of European and Mediterranean landscapes and settlement patterns, from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance
• Towns of western Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic world
• Impact of climate change, epidemic disease and population growth
• Rise of kingdoms, states and empires
• Development of nearly global trade networks in Europe, Africa and Asia, resulting in permanent European settlement in the Americas

Your lectures and seminars consider interdisciplinary approaches to these topics. They will also consider what they can tell us about social and economic change, ideologies and social identities over 1000 years of human history.

The teaching on climate, societal and economic change, is driven from the module tutor's European ice-core research, which gained national media coverage. You can also benefit from hands-on learning, using the Medieval European collections at our on-site Archaeology Museum.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Religion was central to all aspects of Roman life, but did the Romans really 'believe'?

This module explores the traditions and rituals that operated in Roman society, from the earliest stages of archaic Rome, to the advent of Christianity. It will help you to make sense of customs and practices that could baffle even the Romans themselves, alongside showing how the religious system controlled Roman social, political and military activities.

You will examine evidence drawn from the late Republic and early Principate, and use literature and images from the Augustan period as a central hinge for studying the dynamics of religion in Rome.

Topics covered include:

• The definition of 'religion' and comparative studies
• Early Rome and the origins of religion
• The calendar temples and other religious buildings
• Priesthoods and politics
• Sacrifice
• The deification of the emperor
• Foreign cults in Rome
• The supposed 'decline of religion'
• Early Christianity

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module introduces the archaeology of the Mycenaean world. It will familiarise you with the achievements and material culture of one of the greatest European Bronze Age civilizations of the second millennium BC. This will be through discussing the historical, social, cultural and economic context of the period.

You will explore:

• The world of the Mycenaean palaces and citadels, their towns and trading ports
• Warfare
• Religion and cult activities
• Mortuary practices and ancestor worship

We also consider their wider connections across the Mediterranean world.

This module is worth 20 credits.

In the early 20th century, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans’s excavations at the site of Knossos on the island of Crete uncovered the remains of the earliest palatial civilisation in Europe. Knossos, the home of the mythical king Minos and the monstrous Minotaur, became the landmark of a new culture termed as ‘Minoan’.

Based on a combination of lectures and workshops, this module introduces students to the origins of the Aegean complex societies from the late 4th millennium BC and to the rise, apogee and fall of the Minoan palatial, state-level societies of the 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC. 

When Rome was still a small town, and before Athens became a city of international significance, the Etruscan civilisation flourished in Italy and rapidly gained control of the Mediterranean.

But who were the Etruscans? The Greeks and the Romans regarded them as wealthy pirates, renowned for their luxurious and extravagant lifestyle and for the freedom of their women. Archaeology, however, tells us much more about their daily life and funerary customs, their religious beliefs, their economy, their language, and their technical abilities and artistic tastes.

In this module, you will examine visual and material culture, as well as epigraphic and literary sources, in order to lift the shroud of mystery that often surrounds the Etruscans. You will also place them in the context of the wider Mediterranean world in the 1st millennium BC, examining their exchanges with the Near Eastern kingdoms, their cultural interactions with Greece and the Greek colonial world, and their role in the early history of Rome.

By exploring Etruscan cities and cemeteries from the 9th to the 3rd centuries BC, with their complex infrastructures and technologies, lavish paintings, sculptures and metalwork, you will discover a most advanced civilisation that shared much with the classical cultures and yet was very different from them.

This module is worth 20 credits.

You will critically examine themes in Near Eastern Prehistory. The themes take you from the development of agriculture, pastoralism and sedentism to the appearance of the first cities, states and writing. Drawing directly from current research, you will use case studies to examine these themes. You will use archaeological evidence to understand how these developments are reflected in social, religious, economic and political organisations of the prehistoric Near East. You will attend weekly lectures and seminars. After appropriate guidance, you will take part in learning activities includes:

• setting readings
• presenting
• running classroom discussions.

You will receive feedback on these participatory activities. You will write an essay for your formal assessment.

This module examines a range of documents and scholarly controversies pertaining to the Civil Rights Movement between 1940 and 1970. Documents will include public and organisational records, photo-journalism, speeches, memoir and personal papers.

Controversies will include those relating to the chronological limits, spatial dynamics, and gender politics of the movement, as well as those relating to the movement’s goals and achievements.

Did you know you can learn a language alongside your undergraduate degree? You could even gain credits that count towards your studies.

Whether you’re interested in opening up career opportunities around the world, giving your studies a boost by gaining access to research in other languages or simply planning to travel after your studies, developing foreign language skills will help you stand out from the crowd.

We offer nine languages and you can start as a beginner or at a more advanced level.

• Arabic
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Mandarin Chinese
• Russian
• Spanish

You may also choose from the following foreign language-related modules:  

• Language and Language Learning
• Culture of Arabic Language
• Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages
• Exploring Intercultural Awareness  

Find out more about learning a language alongside your degree 

The module will review the origins of photography; early commentaries and debates on the new medium’s status; the identity of those who became photographers; the dominant genres employed in photographic imagery; the developing culture of reproduction, exhibition, and photography criticism. The module will explore the connections and conflicts between 19th-century photography and art. It will also consider the relationship between 19th-century photography and travel, science, and problems of social ideology.