Unit of Assessment 15
Archaeology

Our Archaeology Research Division is situated within the School of Archaeology, Geography & Environmental Science, and has a distinctive identity as a bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences. Through collaborative interdisciplinary scholarship and ambitious programmes of field- and lab-based archaeology, our research agenda addresses fundamental aspects of past human existence that will help us prepare better for current global challenges.

• 1st in the UK for GPA ('grade point average' - the average of quality scorings)
• 1st for research outputs
• 96% of our research overall rated 4* and 3*
• 100% of our research impact rated 4* and 3*

Our research is organised into three clusters:

• Landscape, climate and lived environment: We investigate human-climate-environment interactions from the micro to transnational scales to deliver ‘deep time’ perspectives on the current challenges of climate resilience and environmental sustainability. Our research has generated new narratives of the birth of Neolithic culture building on the results of research and excavation in the Fertile Crescent of Western Asia and western Britain, pushed the boundaries for understanding the long-term dynamics of farming and food production in South America, and deepened awareness of religious change in medieval Europe through the investigation of cult sites and multicultural frontiers.
• Diet, health and the life course: Working between science and humanities approaches, our research delivers inclusive insights on lived experience and wellbeing in the past. We have pioneered osteoarchaeological techniques to identify health and identity at different stages of life history, opened up perspectives on infant dependency, parenting and seasonality in early hominin communities, and integrated biomolecular and archaeological data in novel ways to offer key insights on mobility and multiculturalism in the Roman world.
• Objects, materials and people: Our research offers fundamental perspectives on the relationship between objects and people in the past through innovative social and scientific studies of artefacts. We have transformed understanding of cultural identity and literacy in the Roman world through detailed examinations of personal objects, enhanced knowledge of the flow of metals in European prehistory through the application of cutting-edge scientific techniques, and provoked new questions on object deposition through major studies of later prehistoric grave goods and Roman river finds.

Staff and doctoral students

We submitted 20 staff (18.8 FTE) to REF2021, including 10 Professors, 6 Associate Professors, 1 Lecturer, 3 Research Fellows; 4 are Early Career Researchers. Over the assessment period, there were 51 doctoral completions. We have an annual average of 36 PhD students at any one time; in 2019/20 doctoral students came from 10 countries including the UK.

We are a member of the AHRC South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Programme and have been very successful in winning scholarships, with 14 full awards in the current cohort.

Research centres and partnerships

• British Museum institutional partnership: established in 2018 to develop research collaborations in advance of the opening in 2023 of the British Museum’s Archaeological Research Collection, based at the University of Reading’s Thames Valley Science Park.

Sector recognition

Selected examples of national and international recognition between 2014 and 2020:

• Fellows of the British Academy (FBA) (Professor Martin Bell, Professor Michael Fulford, Professor Roberta Gilchrist, Professor Roger Matthews, Professor Steven Mithen)
• Newton Prize (Professor Steven Mithen, 2020)
• Current Archaeology’s Archaeologist of the Year (Professor Michael Fulford, 2015; Professor Roberta Gilchrist, 2016; Professor Hella Eckardt, 2018)
• Vice-President of the British Academy (Professor Michael Fulford, 2010-15)
• Director of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Chair of its Research Committee (Dr John Creighton, 2014-16)
• Vice-President of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (Professor Michael Fulford, 2014-18)

Find out about the impact our research has on the world around.