Archaeology

Popular perception holds that if the 'cradle of civilization' was nurtured in warm southern climes, then the north was little more than a frozen wasteland. Such caricatures, of course, are hard to support when we consider the almost infinite and varied evidence of the human condition in the northern world. While often living in environments which could be less than favourable and even hostile, northern peoples were anything but more primitive versions of those farther south. Through complex histories of colonization, local innovation and cultural contact, the northern world developed an astonishing range of prehistoric and historic social and cultural forms; from ancient Siberian populations to the Picts of the Scottish highlands and from the hunter-fisher-gatherers of the North Pacific to the Vikings of Scandinavia.

Within this broadly defined region, research in the department is organized along four interlocking themes:

• Human interactions with northern environments - how did individuals and communities adapt to, understand and transform the landscapes they moved and acted in?
   
• Material culture, technology and vernacular architecture - how and why did new kinds of objects, technologies and built structures emerge from, and spread into, the societies of the northern world?
   
• The northern mind - how do past and present societies in the north perceive and understand the world, how do they define themselves in it, and how do they express their beliefs and identities?
   
• Interactions between northern populations - how far did diasporas, colonisations and inter-community contacts define the long-term culture history of the northern world?

At a time when the contemporary world is beginning to cast its eyes northward in search of ever diminishing natural resources, Aberdeen is at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of our understanding of northern cultural diversity both in the past and present.