Archaeology

The course provides a general understanding of metal and ceramic technology and relates the manufacture and use of artefacts to their relevant social contexts in the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the Medieval Period in the Nordic region. Combined with insights from ethnography and ethnoarchaeology in various parts of the world, students discuss how items of bronze, iron, and clay were manufactured and used, and examine the artefacts' find context on sites from the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the Medieval Period. The course has a prominent practical component where the theory form the lectures is put into practice.

Through this course, students will be able to learn about important Chinese cultural relics and related cultural relics, in the meantime, understand and appreciate Chinese history and traditional culture related to cultural relics, which will help to improve their appreciation, broaden their horizen and promote cultural exchange. 

 

This course provides an archaeological perspective on cultural change in the Pacific Islands, including New Zealand, from the earliest human settlement until the early colonial era. This course covers the archaeological history of the Pacific, from the first arrival of people in Australia and Papua New Guinea to the colonization of New Zealand. The course outlines the sequence of human settlement and examines some of the major issues in contemporary Pacific research. Topics include the voyaging and exploration strategies leading to island discovery and settlement, the development of Pacific economies and social systems, and how these were transformed during the colonization of ever more remote islands. Students also examine the effects of human colonization on Pacific environments, including landscape modifications, introductions of new plants and animals, and extinctions.

This course takes an archaeological perspective on Mediterranean societies from the emergence of the village and the conversion to a Neolithic form in the Middle East, through the changes in social structures at the end of the Bronze age. In this context, the course discusses the changes leading people to adopt a way of sedentary life and a production economy. The village life mode induces an increase in exchanges that take a place of increasing importance leading to the emergence of the city and the claim of social hierarchies, leading to the first empires. The course considers the impact of the exchanges in the structures of the Bronze Age societies in the Mediterranean basin and their visibilities in the archaeological field, particularly through the elite and hierarchical relationships.

This course introduces evidence from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods of Western Asia and Europe, to create a context for the understanding of the early prehistory of Ireland. Students look at the possible reasons why communities who lived by foraging and hunting adopted agriculture and what implications those changes had. The course begins with an overview, followed by an examination of various aspects of Mesolithic society. The origin of farming in Western Asia is next, followed by the Neolithic of the central and north European plain and the introduction of agriculture to Western Europe, particularly to Britain and Ireland. The development of ritual and burial monuments is explored towards the end of the course.

This course explores how archaeologists discover, investigate, and engage with archaeological landscapes. Through lectures and discussions, the first part of this course provides students with an understanding of the role of different methods and techniques in modern archaeological practice and approaches to landscape archaeology. The course then provides a chronological discussion of Irish archaeology using landscape-themed worked examples from Ireland and places them in their international context. Lectures cover the use of cartographic sources, aerial photographs, lidar, geophysical surveys, and other remote sensing methods, and the investigation of site-level and landscape-scale remains as explored by a series of worked examples. A staff-led fieldtrip allows students to better understand the concept of landscape and provides training for the end of semester project. The primary assessment requires students to complete an archaeological study which combines field, library, and desk-based research to explore a landscape of their own choosing. This encourages students to experience research and develop skills needed to work independently.

This course covers the procedures currently used to describe, analyze and interpret the archaeological materials of different raw materials and construction elements, mainly ceramic and metal.

This course consists of a number of thematic lectures on key issues in European prehistory. The themes include the introduction of agriculture, the origin of ore management, and the emergence of complex societies, focusing on how these processes were established and developed in southern, central and northern Europe. The conditions for, and the origin and implications of the impact of these different phenomena on human societies are discussed. The significance of these types of constantly ongoing changes in societal transformation in different parts of Europe are highlighted. The lectures and seminars focus on providing overviews of different chronological developments as well as discussing the implications of these societal changes.