Course Co-ordinator: Dr K Milek

Pre-requisite(s): None.

Co-requisite(s): None, although AY 3003 is recommended for students in Archaeology single or joint honours programme.

Note(s): This course is appropriate for Geography, Geology and soil science students as well as more humanities-based students taking the single or joint honours Archaeology programmes. It is a compulsory L4 component of the BSc in Archaeology, the BSc in Archaeology with Chemistry, and the BSc in Archaeology-Geoscience and is an optional L4 component of the BSc in Archaeology –Geography, and so is not available to these students at L3. This course may NOT be included in a graduating curriculum with AY 4006. Students will be asked to make a nominal contribution towards the cost of the field trip.

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the complex relationships between past human societies and the environments with which they were intimately associated, and covers important issues for the archaeology of all regions and time periods, including:

• Different theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of past human-environment relations


• Processes of archaeological site formation: the relationships between human activities, natural processes, and the physical characteristics of soils and sediments on archaeological sites


• Techniques used to reconstruct past human environments, and the importance of situating past cultural practices in their environmental context


• Archaeological case studies from around the world that link past human activities to large-scale landscape changes

2 one-hour lectures or 1 two-hour practical per week, excluding reading weeks (20 hours total) and a one-day field trip to examine and sample soils and sediments at a local archaeological site.

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%); continuous assessment (50%), in the form of a field notebook (10%), a lab notebook (10%), and either a practical project or an essay (30%), depending on the students’ interests and background (3,000 words).

Resit: Marks from continuous assessment to be carried forward (50%); re-sit exam (50%).