BA Ancient History and Archaeology

UCAS code: VV41
Course length: 3 years full time (part time also available)

Archaeology and Ancient History are both concerned with understanding past human social, political and cultural experience, focusing in particular on Greek and Roman antiquity. The joint degree offers you the opportunity to gain both historical and archaeological skills, and to combine the analysis of ancient texts with research on material culture and scientific techniques to understand the lives of people in antiquity. In Archaeology, practical aspects involve the opportunity to participate in the Field School at the Roman town of Silchester.

Course description

Our joint degrees involve an even split between the two subjects with the opportunity to specialise in one of your subjects, or use both, in your dissertation.

Modules

Year 1

Compulsory modules:

• Practising Archaeology: methods and approaches
• From Rome to the Reformation: an introduction to historic archaeology
• The Civilization of Fifth-Century Athens
• Rome in the Augustan Age

Optional modules:

• Primates to Pyramids: an introduction to world prehistory
• Bones, Bodies and Burials: the archaeology of death
• Analysing Museum Displays
  
• Text and Object: the History of Greek and Roman Writing
• Latin
  
• Ancient Greek

Year 2

Compulsory module - one of the following:

• Contemporary Practice in British Archaeology
• Prospects for Classicists and Ancient Historians
• Work Placement for Classicists and Ancient Historians

At least 2 modules from:

• Greek History
• Roman Empire
• Roman Republic

Optional modules, students choose from a list including:

• Field School
• Archaeological Thought
  
• Archaeological Science
  
• The Middle Palaeolithic of Europe
• Later Prehistoric Europe
  
• Celts & Romans: Northern Europe & Britain
• Rome's Mediterranean Empire
• Later Medieval Europe
• Post-Roman and Early Medieval Europe
• Human Activity and Environmental Change
• Techniques in Artefact interpretation
• Techniques in Skeletal Interpretation
• Geophysics
• Introduction to Zooarchaeology
• Object Analysis & Museum Interpretation
• Study Abroad
• Greek History
• Roman History
• Themes and Issues in History

Final Year

Compulsory modules:

• Dissertation

or both:

• Preparation for Dissertation in Classics
• Dissertation in Classic

Optional modules, students choose from a list which may include:

• Burial Archaeology
• Studies in the Lower Palaeolithic
• Palaeopathology
• Emergence of Civilisation in Mesopotamia 
• Age of Stonehenge
• Age of Hillforts
• Roman Material Culture
• Early Anglo-Saxon England
• The Archaeology of the Dark Ages
• The Archaeology of Crusades
• Vikings in the West
• England in the Later Middle Ages
• Gender in Classical Antiquity
• Oeidpus and Antigone in the Twentieth Century
• The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity
• Rich and Poor in the Roman Empire
• Greek Political Thought
• Greek Art and Drama
• Greek and Roman Painting
• Anatolia and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age
• Receptions of Homer
• Roman Religions
• Roman Cities
• Carthage and Greece
• Classics and Empire
• Ancient Biography