Professor John Moreland
Head of Department
BA (Hons.) First Class; PhD
Email address
j.moreland@sheffield.ac.uk
Telephone
[0114 22] 22909
Department address
Department of Archaeology
University of Sheffield
Northgate House,
West Street
Sheffield,
S1 4ET
Biography
My interest in archaeology was stimulated by reading books on the Greeks and Romans borrowed from the mobile library that visited our village in Ireland. I came over to Sheffield in 1977, and graduated with a 1st class honours degree. I returned in 1982 to begin a PhD (with Richard Hodges) on Settlement Patterns and Social Relations in Early Medieval Italy.
I lived in Rome for two years, and in 1988 went to America as Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. I was appointed to a lectureship at Sheffield in 1989 – and have been here ever since. I was promoted to Professor in January 2010, became Head of Department in August 2010 – and am immensely proud to be head of the department where I began my archaeological career!
Research Interests
- the use of writing in Antiquity and the Middle Ages – as a technology of control, a vehicle for resistance, and as a means of communicating with the supernatural
- the role of images (particularly the Cross) in medieval and early modern societies
- the transition from late Antiquity to the middle ages in Europe (particularly in the Britain and the Mediterranean)
- the archaeology of the Reformation
Current research projects / collaborations
- Vestiges of an Antiquarian: The Thomas Bateman Archive (with Deborah Harlan and Professor Dawn Hadley, in collaboration with Museums Sheffield).
- Landscape and belief in the early medieval Peak District
- Archaeology and text
Research supervision
Current Students
- Toby Martin - Identity and the Cruciform Brooch in Early Anglo-Saxon England: An Investigation of Style, Mortuary Context and Use
I would welcome applications from students interested in pursuing research into:
- The use of writing/images in past societies
- The archaeology and history of South Yorkshire from Antiquity to the Reformation
- The archaeology of belief (particularly in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages)
Teaching
Level 1
- European Classical Civilisations
- World Civilisations
Level 2
- Early Historic Europe
- Archaeology and Text
Level 3
- Dark Age Britain (from 2012)
Masters
- Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology I
- Death and Commemoration
- From the Age of Migration to the Age of Discoveries
Selected publications
- Archaeology, Theory and the Middle Ages. London: Duckworth (2010)
- Archaeology and Text. London: Duckworth (2001)
- ‘Land and power from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England?’ Historical Materialism 19.1: 171-89 (2011).
- ‘Catastrophe, continuity … or Late Antiquity’, in Denis Sami and Gavin Speed (eds) Debating Urbanism: Within and Beyond the Walls: 141-44 (Leicester) (2010).
- ‘Going native, becoming German: Isotopes and identities in late Roman and early medieval England’, postmedieval 1: 142-49 (2010).
- ‘Ethnicity, power and the myth of the English’ (in Russian), Srednie Veka 70(3): 163-95 (Studies on Medieval and Early Modern History, Russian Academy of Sciences) (translated by Ilya Afanasyev) (2009)
- ‘The Farfa survey: broadening our perspective’, in F. Coarelli and H. Patterson eds. Mercator Placidissimus: The Tiber Valley in Antiquity: 779-788. Rome. (2009)
Conferences
- ‘Words, objects and belief in Anglo-Saxon England’, invited paper presented at the conference on Words and Things: Texts and Material Culture in Late Antiquity, Cornell University, USA (April, 2010).
- ‘Landscape and belief in medieval England’, invited paper presented at the Recerca Avançada en Arqueologia Medieval conference, Lleida, Spain (March, 2010).
- Invited discussant, Writing as Material Practice: Substance, Surface and Medium Conference, University College London (May, 2009).
- Invited discussant, From One Sea to Another. Trade Centres in Northern Europe and Mediterranean during the Early Middle Ages, Comacchio, Italy (March, 2009).
- Invited discussant, Writing and Non-Writing Conference, Sheffield Centre for Aegean Archaeology, University of Sheffield (January, 2009).
- Organiser of the Archaeologies of the Everyday Conference, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield (June, 2008).
Other professional activities
- President of the Hunter Archaeological Society (founded 1912) 2007 - 2010
- Editorial boards of postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies (2009 -), and Debates de Arqueología Medieval (2010 -)
- Member of the Centro Interuniversitario per la Storia e l'Archeologia dell'Alto Medioevo (Universities of Siena, Padova and Venezia).