An intensive 1-year (or 2-year part-time) postgraduate taught degree with both research and vocational pathways

Explore the diversity of human history on a global scale through the material remains of the past.

Address significant questions for the past and present, including those relating to global migrations, competition in social groups, the origins of agriculture, and the development of complex societies.

Learn to analyse and interpret archaeological evidence from artefacts, landscapes, architecture, written texts, as well as human, animal and plant remains.

Critically examine the archaeological process through both the theoretical and practical areas of the discipline.

At Sheffield, we are committed to the position that archaeology should inspire those who study it and those who explore the results of that study. Archaeology offers the widest perspective possible on the diversity of human history at a world scale and it asks fundamental questions concerning the nature of humanity and the processes that brought about significant changes in human history, including the earliest global migrations, the origins of agriculture, and the nature and development of complex societies. Archaeology employs all sources of relevant information, such as artefacts, architecture, written texts (where available), and animal and plant remains, and draws its inspiration from dialogue with a wide range of disciplines. You'll develop skills to evaluate critically different sources of information and to work between the theoretical and practical demands of the discipline.

Sheffield is the ideal place to study archaeology. Our staff are research leaders across the discipline - from science-based archaeology to archaeological theory, and from the archaeology of earliest humans to the archaeology of the early modern world. We harness this diversity within the unity of a discipline devoted to understanding past humanity, and use it to provide you with the opportunity to work between and across different view points and approaches, and to make your own mind up about their strengths and weaknesses. What we will ask of you, as a member of our lively academic community, is that you develop your own answers to the questions raised.

Prof Peter Day (Programme Director)

Peter is a specialist in material culture, with particular emphasis on ceramics and the Aegean. His research interests include archaeological material culture, The technology of ceramics, Ethnographies of craft, The archaeology of the Aegean.

Dr Gianna Ayala

Gianna’s research interests are wide reaching and focus on the integration of different analytical methods. She works predominately in the Mediterranean but has worked all over the world, including Britain, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Turkey and Argentina.

Prof Maureen Carroll

Maureen has conducted numerous archaeological fieldwork projects in Italy (most recently at Pompeii and at Vagnari in Puglia), Germany, Britain, North Africa and Cyprus. Her research interests are varied and include, Roman death, burial and commemoration, Latin funerary epigraphy, Infancy and earliest childhood in the Roman world, Clothing, identity and self-presentation in the Roman empire, The archaeology and history of ancient Greek and Roman gardens.

Prof Dawn Hadley

Dawn is currently the Head of Department. Her research includes the society and culture of Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, the impact of the Vikings on Britain, yhe construction of gender, especially masculinity, in Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, Funerary archaeology, the antiquarian Thomas Bateman (1821-61), The Tudor hunting lodge and working-class community at Sheffield Manor Lodge, the archaeology of nineteenth-century working-class communities, the archaeology of childhood.

Prof Paul Halstead

Paul’s research has focussed chronologically and geographically on the later prehistory (Neolithic and Bronze Age) of Greece, thematically on the relationship between farming economies and social change, and methodologically on the contributions of zooarchaeology and ethnoarchaeology to the study of past animal and crop husbandry. He has participated in archaeological fieldwork projects in Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Bulgaria and Britain and in ethnoarchaeological projects in Greece, France and Spain.

Dr Jane Rempel

Jane’s research interests focus on Greek archaeology, specifically issues surrounding colonisation and social interaction at the margins of the ancient Greek world, especially the Black Sea region. Other areas of interest include the Hellenistic east and the question of `hellenisation,´ landscape archaeology and funerary commemoration. She has done fieldwork in Italy, Greece, Ukraine and Russia and Armenia.