1. What is archaeology?
- Archaeology’s predecessors: antiquarian and Biblical chronology
- New ways of thinking
- The first archaeologists
- Why archaeology?
- Changing face of the past in the past
2. Reading the landscape
- Aerial photography
- Desk-based assessments
- Topographical survey and fieldwalking
- Geophysical survey
- Interpreting results
- Computerised information processing
3. Excavation techniques
- Understanding stratigraphy
- Context: the most important element of excavation
- The Harris matrix
- Excavation strategy – sequence of events
- Recording the excavation
4. Types of sites and features
- Site formational process
- Unusual site conditions
- Characteristics of features
- Negative features – pits, ditches and postholes
- Positive/structural features
5. Artefacts: ambassadors from the past
- Objects – the ‘social lubricant’ of human interaction
- How artefacts enter the archaeological record
- Preservation factors
- What can the artefacts tell us?
- Assemblages
6. How old is it?: archaeological dating
- Typology, cross-dating and seriation
- Historic chronology
- Absolute dating and radiocarbon dating
- Radiocarbon dating – some difficulties
- Dendrochronology and ice-core dating
- Luminescence dating
7. Archaeological science
- Archaeobotanics
- Animal bones and shells
- Analysis of materials and artefacts
- Human skeletal remains
- DNA and isotopic analysis
8. Burial archaeology
- Treatment of the dead
- Grave goods
- Human burial practices – Palaeolithic to 1st millennium BCE
- Human burial practices – 1st millennium BCE to present
9. Making sense of it all: interpretation
- Diffusionism, migration and invasion
- Processualism: the ‘new’ archaeology
- Post-processualism
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Gender archaeology
- Interpretation: theory and data united
10. Whose archaeology? Museums, the past and the public
- Archaeology and identity
- Heritage: who decides if it’s worthy?
- Museums: archaeology for all
- The public and archaeological human remains
- What can archaeology do for the public?
We strongly recommend that you try to find a little time each week to engage in the online conversations (at times that are convenient to you) as the forums are an integral, and very rewarding, part of the course and the online learning experience.