Social Archaeology Stream
The Social Archaeology stream is distinctive in exploring interpretive and theoretical points of view in archaeology from a comparative stance, transcending specific regions. Modules in this stream focus on past and current conceptual and political matters in archaeology, underlining debates about the relevance of the archaeological record in the world today.
The stream draws on School of Archaeology's academic and senior research staff, including museum curators and other specialists to discuss the theories and practices of archaeology, and identify debates in regional traditions of thinking and interconnections to other disciplines. Topics addressed in the modules range from identity matters to cognition, critical readings of material culture, style, semiotics, as well as exploring gender and memory.
Overall, the stream emphasizes ideas and interpretation, investigating cases from prehistory up to contemporary times. You will have the opportunity the engage with both established and new bodies of archaeological thought, including New Archaeology, post-processualism, and New Materialism/posthumanism. Equally, the stream introduces archaeology's changing position in contemporary society and its links to museum collections, heritage discussions, and decolonizing practices. You will be offered to research and debate how relevant these theories are to archaeological subject matters and problems, and to consider how you might want to shape future archaeological practice and thinking.
Your taught modules and independent research will allow you to deepen your knowledge and understanding of the ever-changing world of archaeological theory, and the historical and contemporary contexts in which theoretical trends develop.
The small-group teaching and learning provide you with the opportunity to explore key sources of evidence and approaches from around the world in order to investigate a wide range of subjects, such as:
- Art and aesthetics
- Coloniality and decoloniality
- Colonialism and post-colonialism
- Ethical archaeology
- Feminist and gendered perspectives
- History of archaeological thought
- Indigenous and stakeholder engagement
- Modernity and post-modernism
- Material culture
- Museum collections
- The 'ontological' turn
Students benefit from the world-renowned collections of the Bodleian Libraries, Pitt Rivers & Ashmolean Museum, and other resources.
All MSc in Archaeology students take the mandatory Archaeological Principles: Data & Theory. You will also take two core modules offered within Social Archaeology: One List A taught in the first term, and the other from List B taught in the second term. The fourth module is your option module (also from List B), also taught in the second term; this is chosen from all available List B modules in any stream, or a module from the MSt in Classical Archaeology. In some circumstances a subject taught in the MSc in Archaeological Science may be taken as your option module, however this is taught over two terms.
Please note that the modules and streams listed on this website are indicative of the typical offerings and are subject to review each year. Whilst every effort is made to offer the full variety of modules/streams this is not possible to do every year. This is due to the fact that some modules/streams are dependent on student numbers to ensure an appropriate quality of education; timetable clashes; staff availability; etc. We aim to keep the website as up-to-date as possible but we recommend that you seek specific advice from admissions@arch.ox.ac.uk on module/stream availability.
One of the most vital areas within archaeology over the last forty years has been the debate concerning method and theory. Archaeological theory has shifted from the attempts to generalise about human life developed by the New or Processual archaeologists from the 1960s onwards. In the late 1970s there was a reaction against grand theory and a greater concentration on local prehistoric sequences and the finer details of people's lives by the so-called post-processualists. Today there is a huge range of archaeological theories in use, focussing on issues of identity, gender, mind, material culture, art and aesthetics, as well as the more traditional questions of technology and subsistence. Archaeology has drawn on a huge range of theory from outside the discipline, ranging from evolutionary and ecological theories, post-modernist and post-colonial theories, feminist and gendered perspectives and theories of history and change. How relevant any or all of these theories are to archaeological subject matters and problems is debatable, but these are subjects that need debating if we are to decide the most profitable and productive directions for archaeology. Recently, archaeological method has become a source of intense debate, looking at how social and intellectual factors influence the ways in which archaeological sites are excavated and interpreted. Excavation and analysis are not purely technical matters, but have great influence on how we create our basic forms of evidence and make sense of them.
Loosely following a chronological line, this option will first survey later 20th century archaeological thought, starting with the notions of culture history, processual and post-processual archaeology. This survey of theories and methods will then form the backdrop to a more detailed engagement with theoretical developments since the late 1990s and leading up to the state of archaeological thinking today.
Convenor: Prof. Lambros Malafouris