Social Archaeology Research Group

The common focus of our research is on studies of individual and group identity in the past. The group brings together a variety of diachronic perspectives on social relations and interactions between the social, built and natural environments. We cover the archaeology of later prehistoric, Roman and medieval archaeology. Researchers in SOARG utilise a range of different theoretical and methodological approaches to explore and integrate the archaeology of these different periods and regions, both in the field and from the desktop.

Key areas

• Prehistoric Landscapes
• Social complexity and inequality
• Historic settlement, urban & rural
• Religious Landscapes
• Gender, the Body & Material Culture
• Diaspora and Colonisation
• Human-animal-environment Relationships

Projects

• Anglo-Saxon Monastic Landscapes: A reconstruction from Lyminge, Kent
• Evaluation of PPG16 grey literature and the rural settlement of Roman Britain
• Objects and Identities in Roman Britain and the north-western provinces (book to be published in 2014)
• Foreigners and Locals in Roman Britain: Painting a more Complex Picture for School Children
• MAP: the Meroe Archival Project (partnered with the University of Khartoum, Sudan)
• University of Reading Excavations at Amheida
• ARCHIRAN - Ancient Iran: A Social Archaeology
• RADII: Recording Archaeological Data from Iraq and Iran
• Sedentism and Resource Management in the Neolithic of Western Iran
• Arroux Valley (Burgundy)
• The Gatas Project
• Glastonbury Abbey Excavations
• Bartlow Hills Roman burial mounds
• A Long Way from Home: Diaspora Communities in Roman Britain
• Silchester Roman town
• Silchester mapping project
• Bordesley Abbey
• Norwich Cathedral Archaeology
• The medieval monastic cemetery in Britain
• Research in Russia
• Inclusive, accessible archaeology