The CBA’s new online lecture series will bring you a range of speakers from across archaeology and heritage. The lectures will be exploring a wide range of themes and ideas around the question, what is archaeology?
Speakers will draw on their own experiences, a range of sites, excavations, techniques, scientific approaches, and museum practice to bring you the latest in archaeological thinking and research.
Collectively the lecture series will sit alongside existing CBA activity such as the Festival of Archaeology and the Archaeological Achievement Awards and contribute to a wider debate on the very nature of archaeology and how we can draw in new audiences and perceptions.
Upcoming Lectures
Dead Isle - Endangered heritage ecologies
ONLINE - Thursday 6th April 2023 at 7pm
This talk is about a new project that brings together archaeology, art and ecology. It will focus on why these connections are important, and why they are of value to local communities. In 1871 Alfred Nobel started building a dynamite factory on the Ardeer Peninsula in North Ayrshire, Scotland, for the manufacture of black powder, safety fuse, and detonators. From the 1940s onwards, munitionettes worked there and they graffitied lyrics on the walls of their workspace, of old and new songs, whilst they were cutting cordite paste. The sand mounds that surround the huts now support nesting songbirds. Alex Boyd, Iain Hamlin and I are negotiating new ways in which to deal with a situation where the built environment is decaying whilst ecological habitats thrive, and yet there is the constant possibility of further development that would put all of this at risk. How do we value the human and the non-human in such a landscape? How are we creating a new kind of account of memory and place? Let me tell you a little bit about it all on the 6th of April.
Footmarks: A journey into our restless past
ONLINE - Thursday 25th May 2023 at 7pm
Can we ever know what it was like to move in the past; to understand its meanings and complexities? Unlike many other disciplines; ones that can observe and interview the moving subject, archaeology has only the silent witness. This silence, though, is not to be misconstrued with stillness, and the evidence for past mobilities surrounds us. Focusing on mobility provides a dynamic approach to archaeology, and in this presentation, I will discuss some of the evidence for mobility within the archaeological record and explore ways in which archaeology can engage better with it. I will address what mobility can contribute to the understanding and interpretation of past landscapes and move away from archaeology’s traditional focus upon place and location.
Previous Lectures
Many of the lectures from the This Is Archaeology series are recorded and available to watch again via the members area of the CBA website.
Bog Bodies - Face to Face with the Past
In this talk, Dr Melanie Giles shared the latest thinking about the phenomenon of bog bodies.
Journeys - Of people, objects, ideas and the dead, in Britain and Ireland, 4300-1500
In this talk, Dr Alison Sheridan looked at what was moving into, out of, and around Britain and Ireland between 4300 BC and 1500 BC, how, and why.
Excavating the map? Landscape archaeologies of the Ordnance Survey
In this lecture, Professor Keith Lilley talked to us about landscapes and the associated field-monuments that played a vital role in mapping our nations.
What drives national identity? An online talk with Mike Pitts
Journeys have become a huge topic in British archaeology and how we imagine our islands’ long history. In this talk, Mike Pitts looks at what happened in the past and how that affects our concepts of national identity?
This event was part of the CBA's 2022 Festival of Archaeology.
The Made in Migration Collective: A collaborative archaeology of contemporary forced displacement in Europe
The Made in Migration Collective is a fluid group of displaced and non-displaced individuals originally from eight different countries. Rachael Kiddey and the Made in Migration Collective will share how they use established archaeological and cultural heritage methods to co-document personal belongings and places significant to lived experiences of contemporary forced displacement in Europe.
This event was part of the CBA's 2022 Festival of Archaeology.
Cuilcagh to Cleenish: Unlocking rural heritage for positive community development
Heritage activities can have social implications for communities and are as much about building growth and confidence as they are about uncovering the past. Learn more about community development with Barney Devine.
The Scottish Crannog Centre 2018-2022
Join Rachel Backshall and Rich Hiden of the Scottish Crannog Centre and hear the story of an organisation going through transition facing Covid pandemic-devastating fires, frogs and locusts.
Roman Britain's Pirate King A talk by Dr Simon Elliott, archaeologist, author and CBA Trustee, on this great untold story of British history.
A talk by Dr Simon Elliott, archaeologist, author and CBA Trustee, on this great untold story of British history.
The Treasonous Sands – fiction and fatality in the narratives of Robert Erskine Childers and Mary Spring Rice
Join artist Mhairi Sutherland for an exploration of the work of Erskine Childers and Mary Spring Rice. Drawing on travels to the German East Friesian Islands, archive material and historical narratives Mhairi's work explores Irish-British cultural identities and the context and impact of Childers The Riddle of the Sands and Spring Rice's logbook written whilst aboard the Asgard in 1914.
2023 Beatrice De Cardi lecture - The Art of Archaeology with Dr Rose Ferraby
Delivered as part of the CBA's 2023 AGM, this year's Beatrice De Cardi lecture was presented by Dr Rose Ferraby! It explores the relationship between art and archaeology, investigates the role of art among past societies and considers how, through the stories it evokes, art can reveal new perspectives and enhance our archaeological understanding of the past.
Breaking Boundaries and Building a Future for Archaeology: Current Research from Early Career Archaeologists
January’s This Is Archaeology event was all about celebrating the work of early career archaeologists and their work to develop and expand our understanding of the world around us and what it means to be human using archaeological tools.
This included 3 short talks:
-
Valuable Visuals: The Roles of Traditional and Digital Imaging in Modern Archaeology by Dr Li Sou
-
Building Ties Between Archaeology and the Public at Ilorin, Northern Yorubaland, Nigeria: A Nigerian Archaeologist's Perspective by Bolaji Josephine Owoseni
-
Lessons from the Past: What Can Archaeological Science Teach Us About the History and Future of Farming? By Ayushi Nayak
The talks were followed by a panel discussion chaired by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick.
Archaeology, memory & our contested pasts
Focusing on past conflicts in Northern Ireland, Paul’s presentation looked at how archaeology, memory and intangible heritage can play an important role to help underpin a more plural and democratic society.