Archaeology and Classical Civilisation BA

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.

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 history and development of the scholarship on ancient Greece and Rome and on specific theories, approaches and methods used by modern scholarship. The aim is to sharpen your engagement with and understanding of scholarship, and to give a deeper appreciation of the ways the ancient world has been appropriated. Studying the history of scholarship in its socio-political context will show you how the questions we ask depend on the situations we live in; it will also allow you to judge the merits and limitations of scholarly approaches and will develop your skills of research and analysis, as preparation for your third-year dissertation. As with the Extended Source Study, you will choose a work-sheet relating to an area of the ancient world which particularly interests you; the module is assessed by an oral presentation and a 4,500-5,000 word essay.

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 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.

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.

From the bloodshed of the gladiatorial arena to civil wars and the assassinations of emperors, violence was ubiquitous in ancient Rome. This module will consider the various forms of violence in the Roman world and examine how they featured in daily life, literature, and art. The module will introduce students to a wide range of interpretative frameworks, drawn from fields such as film theory and social psychology, and will apply these theories to various aspects of Roman violence including, but not limited to, gladiatorial combat, criminal violence, and warfare. The focus throughout will be on issues surrounding the spectatorship of violence, its central role in Roman society, and its interpretation in the modern world.

This module will:

Develop student understanding of the various forms and ways of viewing violence in the Roman world

Introduce students to a range of theoretical approaches to violence in ancient Rome

Enable students to apply these theories to a wide variety of ancient evidence

Develop skills in oral communication, academic writing, and the critical analysis of sources

This module examines the rise and fall of ancient empires in the late Archaic and Classical periods, especially the Persian Empire, the Athenian Empire, and the Second Athenian Confederacy.

How did the defeat of the Persians in the Persian Wars lead to the rise of Athenian imperialism? How similar or different were the Persians and Athenians in their strategies of control? Why did the Athenians lose their maritime empire to the Spartans so quickly? How can we account for the successes and failures of different experimentations of empires in this period?

Apart from the political and institutional aspects, the module will also explore the ideological and cultural aspects of empires and the relations between the internal and external success of imperial powers. Students will engage with a wide variety of sources from the literary texts of Herodotus and Thucydides, to Greek poetry and drama, inscriptions on stone, the archaeology of memory, and Greek art and artefacts.

This module embeds employability into the curriculum, giving students direct experience of a workplace, developing hard and soft skills (both subject-specific and beyond).

The module involves part-time professional placement (1 day a week for 6 weeks or equivalent) in an external organisation. It is aimed at developing hands-on work experience and employability skills in a workplace relevant to Arts/Humanities graduates.

Lectures, seminars and workshops will be organised across the School, with input by the Careers team to provide learning support/‘scaffolding’.

This module is worth 20 credits.

The Greeks are often credited with the invention of democracy, yet many Greek cities were ruled in antiquity by autocrats or elites.

This module studies the institution of tyranny in archaic and classical Greece (c. 550-324 BC) and aims to assess the impact of autocratic rule on the politics and culture of the Greek world.

You will examine the history of three major examples of tyrannies in this period: the Pisistratids of Athens, the Deinomenids in Sicily and the rule of Dionysius I of Syracuse. Through this, you will consider how the Greeks viewed and defined tyrants, the main characteristics and features of tyranny; and whether these altered in different periods and locations.

This module examines the reign of Justinian (527-565): the last great Roman Emperor.

Justinian ruled at a time of considerable upheaval including the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire, the growing power of Persia and a plague in Eurasia. But he was able to stamp his mark firmly during tumultuous times, from conquering Africa, Italy and much of Spain, to codifying Roman law.

This module approaches Justinian and his age in a thematic fashion, looking at developments in politics, culture, and society across the sixth century and placing those developments in a broader context.

We will use a broad range of evidence in the course of the module: historical texts, literary evidence, inscriptions, papyri, and art. We will also engage critically with modern assessments of this complex and controversial emperor.

This module covers the formative Hellenistic period of Roman culture.

You will explore the adoption of elements of Hellenistic culture in the art and archaeology of Italy between 330-30 BC. You will particularly focus on the varieties of interaction in the different regions of the Italian peninsula, and how these processes of Hellenisation paved the way for the iconic worlds of the Roman imperial period.

Topics include the general designs and stylistic changes of art in Hellenistic Italy. Within this, you will explore public, private, funerary and religious art in different mediums like sculpture, painting, architecture and urbanism.

You will also learn about the interdependencies of Hellenisation and Romanisation.

This module will introduce students to the reception of ancient Greek and Roman myth, literature and history in the medium of comic books from the 20th and 21st centuries.

We will explore how various modern presentations of the ancient world can be used to better understand both the ancient world itself and our relationship to it. This will involve a critical understanding not just of the content of certain comic books but also of the related theories of cultural studies, reception studies, narratology, semiotics, race and colonialism, sexuality and morality in both the ancient and modern world. As such students will be expected to be able to deal with complex issues not just about the ancient world, but of modern comic book production too.

The themes that will be explored will consist of; Greek and Roman mythology, Greek and Roman historical events, Greek tragedy and heroism; all the while dealing with such case studies as horror comics, sci-fi comics, superhero comics and comic adaptations of ancient myths.

Forming the political, cultural and religious heart of the Roman world, Rome has provided an incredible wealth of iconic monuments and buildings whose legacy is still felt today. Through a combination of lectures and seminars, we will follow the chronological development of this fascinating city and its immediate surroundings: with the main focus placed on the mid-Republic onwards, the entire period of Imperial rule, culminating with Constantine in the 4th century AD.

Detailed discussion and analysis of topography, including key monuments and buildings, will provide students with an informed understanding of the main periods of development within the urban landscape and the levels of architectural sophistication and innovation that were achieved: discussions will also be encouraged to investigate the social and political context of these developments and the impact made by specific regimes

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 introduces map-making for the Arts and Humanities. You will be introduced to the field of spatial humanities and will learn how to carry out spatial analyses of humanities datasets and present their findings to a high standard.

You’ll be introduced to the key principles of spatial analysis and digital cartography using open-source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. We will also explore the broad and exciting applications of spatial analysis.

We will also work with you to help you understand the role of GIS in digital humanities, the role of this in research and practice more widely, and the employability value of GIS as a skill.

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.

Content to be confirmed.

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.

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.

This module will explore late Roman Republican political and oratorical culture through the lens of the enmity between Cicero and Milo on the one hand and Clodius on the other, which led to the death of Clodius and the subsequent trial of Milo in 52 BCE: a watershed year in the decline of the Roman Republic, when on-going political chaos briefly led to the concentration of power in the hands of one man, Pompey the Great.

Cicero’s speech for the defence was the culmination of a years-long oratorical competition between himself and Clodius for the political high ground: he failed to secure Milo’s acquittal, but the speech he published later was proclaimed a masterpiece.

We will consider the broad historical context of the trial, the evidence for the lives and characters of the protagonists, the rhetoric of Cicero’s renowned speech for the defence and the reception of that text in the ancient and modern worlds. 

These two modules are for complete beginners. They are also suitable if you have already done some study of Latin or Classical Greek (up to GCSE level). They cover the same material as ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 1’ and ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 2’. They just let you start your chosen language at a later point in your degree.

You’ll get an introduction to the grammar and vocabulary of your chosen language and you will be supported to analyse and understand basic sentences and to translate short passages.

There is no speaking and listening element - the main focus will be on reading text.

If you take these modules in your second year, you can continue onto the ‘Intermediate’ modules in your third year. Note: this is mandatory for Classics BA students.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Continue your study of Latin or Classical Greek, following on from the beginners’ level modules.

You will thoroughly consolidate the vocabulary and grammar of your chosen language and begin the detailed linguistic and literary study of an unadapted Latin or Greek text.

In Latin, you will typically read a text such as Cicero’s Pro Archia, or a book of Virgil or Ovid.

In Greek, the text might be a complete speech by Lysias or selections from a longer text such as the Odyssey or a Greek tragedy.

The assessment for these modules emphasises comprehension and analysis of grammatical structures over memorisation and translation.

Each module is worth 20 credits.