The 2022 lecture will be given by Christopher Evans, Emeritus Director / Director of Research of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit at the University of Cambridge
The lecture is open to the public and free to attend, it will take place in person and also be available to view live online. Please only register for your preferred ticket type.
If attending in person, please join us for a drinks reception at 6.30pm before the lecture starts at 7pm. If joining on line the evening will begin at 7pm.
Informed by the subject’s historiography, and arguing that our fieldwork needs to be imbued with a greater experimental ethos (i.e. ‘failing better’), the talk will address a number of themes arising from over 40 years of investigation along the River Great Ouse at its junction with the Fens. Starting with the Haddenham Project of the 1980s – with its great causewayed enclosure and long barrow excavations – the early 1990s and beyond have seen development-led fieldwork at Barleycroft Farm/Over expose ancient landscapes on a huge scale. Against a background of cross-landscape artefact and environmental sampling on a multitude of sites (tackled by wide-ranging methodologies) and the investigation of numerous monuments (including 16 barrows/ring-ditches, henges, and five long mortuary enclosures) the unprecedented scale of the work allows unique insights into prehistoric communities and their riverine land-use. The talk’s key themes include the character of early pit cluster ‘occupations’ and the expression of distinct group identities at a local level; varying period-settlement floodplain distributions; the nature of ‘ritual landscapes’ and their relationship to contemporary settlement; and whether barrow cemeteries on mid-stream islands were central places or instead had territorial linkages to one of their adjacent bank-side landscapes.
The annual Pitt Rivers Lecture was established in 2017 as part of the celebrations marking 50 years of archaeological and anthropological teaching and research at Bournemouth University and its predecessor institutions. It is organized by staff and students, and presented in association with the Prehistoric Society. The lecture celebrates the achievements of General Pitt Rivers (1827–1900), a distinguished Dorset-based archaeologist and anthropologist whose descendants still live in the area and have close connections with Bournemouth University.
Previous Pitt Rivers Lectures:
2017 Professor Richard Bradley (University of Reading) “Pitt Rivers as pioneer”
2018 Dr Alison Sheridan (National Museums Scotland) “Long before Brexit….”
2019 Professor Ruth Tringham (University of California, Berkeley, USA) “Fire: Friend or fiend?”
2020 Professor Chris Stringer (Natural History Museum, London) “The origins of our species” (available to view here)
2021 - Sue Hamilton (UCL Institute of Archaeology) “Rapa Nui: Myths and realities of an iconic past” (available to view here)
For further information on this event please contact Professor Timothy Darvill, [email protected]
Please note that before placing an order, you will be asked to agree to Bournemouth University’s terms and conditions (see below). Please read these terms carefully and make sure you understand them before ordering any Products.
Bournemouth University’s Online Event Terms and Conditions
Photos may be taken at the event and this online event may be recorded. For details in respect of how these may be used please contact the organiser. If you do not want to appear in any photos or recordings please notify the host. In respect of recordings please keep your camera and audio off and avoid using any chat function during the event (we will do our best to respond to any questions you have through other channels). For further information, please refer to our privacy notice.
