Archaeology

This course introduces students to the material and visual culture of the ancient world from the second millennium BC to late antiquity. Semester 1 focuses on the Greek world. Students will study the built environment - from the great urban monuments to everyday domestic units (including temples, "homes" for the gods). Students explore the art and iconography of the ancient world alongside the material residues of daily life and ritual. Students are introduced to the different perspectives and methods of both archaeologists and art historians in interpreting material remains and visual images. The course combines close study of individual pieces of evidence with an evaluation of how they illuminate the societies, cultures, institutions, and economies of classical antiquity. The course draws heavily from the extraordinary collections in London, particularly the British Museum.

The course introduces students to both the academic and practical aspects of traditional and digital methods of archaeological illustrations including finds drawing. The academic aspects concentrate on types of technique, style, materials and equipment used, and the layout and presentation of drawings for publication. The practical work involves the creation and preparation of drawings to a publication standard (resulting in an assessed portfolio). The artefact illustration sessions concentrate on the drawing of flintwork, pottery, and metalwork for both hand inking and digital presentation. The digital element of the course includes the use of Adobe Illustrator to create artefact, site location, and historic map illustrations as well as addressing the use of computer aided design (CAD software) in archaeological site planning and the principles and conventions of image-editing using Adobe Photoshop. Students are taught to analyze archaeological illustrations and consider their effectiveness in communicating archaeological data. 

This course introduces students to some of the main changes in human prehistory and history which have contributed to creating the world as we know it. It achieves this by focusing on 20 different "things" (e.g. pots, metals, houses, burials, and more), which can be expanded outwards to understand societies, whole periods, and key episodes of social and political change. The course takes a broadly chronological structure, stretching from the Neolithic to Medieval periods, and covers an area encompassing Europe, the Mediterranean, and Western Asia.

The course deals with particular aspects of Egypt’s archaeology, history, and social history, from Prehistoric to Islamic periods. It draws on archaeological knowledge from the material remains, such as architecture, burials, and pottery in their social and archaeological context to reconstruct social and political history, development of hierarchy, power and ideology. Through Egyptology, it combines textual sources with material remains in the construction of various aspects of ancient culture: social and political history, art and architecture, and religion. The course also introduces the theory and methods of archaeology and Egyptology to discuss the sources of information and how they can be approached.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. This course focuses on the historical, theoretical, and methodological foundations of iconographic and iconological research. Through a diachronic examination of some examples, from Prehistory to the Middle Ages, the course explores the world of ancient images and their semantic value. In particular, the topics covered include: reading images: theoretical approaches; history of the studies in iconology; iconography and iconology in archaeology; current research methods and tools and their issues; and case studies (in FALL 2023) in Mediterranean Antiquity, from Prehistory to the Middle Age (the presented samples change every year).

This course helps students look differently and critically at objects from the past (and the present) and to appreciate the huge importance material culture holds for understanding human society. Much older than the written record, objects are a major category of archaeological evidence and a vital tool for the archaeologist. Students review key artefact assemblages from prehistory through to the medieval period. While there is a general focus on Irish artefacts, students also consider things from Britain and continental Europe. Students explore such topics as object classification (typologies), the scientific analysis of archaeological materials, and the contribution of experimental archaeology. Alongside this, students examine the many different roles and functions that objects had in the past and how these often diverge from our modern views and practices. They explore concepts such as ownership and wealth, object deposition and discard, and the life-cycle of objects.

This course examines archaeologies of world religions and determine the materiality of sacred and secular ritual expression. It explores rituals associated with death such as sacrifice, mummification and cannibalism; shamanistic practices as shown in rock art from Kazakhstan to cave art in France and Spain; the rise of "fertility cult" figurines from Czech Republic to Malta; totemic beliefs and ancestor worship in Torres Strait and ritual landscapes surrounding Stonehenge.

In this course, students learn about contemporary archaeological and anthropological perspectives in the study of material culture. Questions that come up include: why the summer solstice is celebrated at Stonehenge; how houses differ across cultures; why we give each other gifts and wrap them; and how clothing gives us identity? Studying human-object relations from a range of perspectives, students explores the role of materiality and the consumer society.

The course provides a comparative understanding of mobility and migration patterns in prehistory. It examines theoretical approaches that explore human adaptation towards changes in society related to migration or increased/decreased mobility. The course is transdisciplinarily linked to subjects like anthropology, linguistics, genetics, and geochemistry. From anthropological models, it engages the societal causes and causations of mobility and migration. Linguistics is implemented as a tool to understand connections between languages and different forms of cultural movement, and novel approaches from the natural sciences like ancient DNA and isotope analysis are explored to further contextualize physical mobility. The course also implements a practical component where the theory from the lectures is put into practice in laboratory work (in a broad sense). Scientific approaches are explored to get a source-critical perspective on how to frame and understand contact between and within cultural groups.

This course investigates the development of the Egyptian understanding of the Afterlife and the Gods. It discusses the role of the temple both as a religious and economic institution, and the creating of an industry based around the creation of funerary objects and tombs. It covers topics such as mummification, the development of private tomb architecture, the role of the Offering Cult and focus on sites of particular significance such as Abydos. The course as a whole provides the students with a comprehensive overview of how the Egyptians – both elite and non-elite – interacted with their Gods, understood their mythology and prepared themselves for Eternity.