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
‘We dig Caerau!’ Cardiff’s Hidden Hillfort and the power of community archaeology
ONLINE - Thursday 15th June 2023 at 7pm
Our lecture will explore the significance of co-producing archaeological and historical research in close partnership with communities, and consider the ways in which valuing local heritage and the collective discovery of the past has the power to create new and positive life-changing opportunities for all involved.
To illustrate this, we will talk about the CAER Heritage Project from its humble beginnings to becoming an award-winning, flagship civic mission and development project for both Cardiff University and community development partners Action in Caerau and Ely (ACE). It is essential that we recognise that Universities are an integral part of their communities and that they have an immense responsibility to fulfil their social and civic mission. Our lecture will highlight the how power of archaeology, the power of community, and the power of co-production means that when we come together then we can harness the potential of heritage and create new pasts and new futures.
This is Archaeology: Traces from the other end of time: imaginary futures and the prehistoric past
ONLINE - Tuesday 18th July 2023 at 7pm
This event is free as part of the 2023 Festival of Archaeology.
How we write about the archaeological past, especially prehistory, is not something we often consider in any depth, although in an age when we are rightly concerned to demonstrate the public value of archaeology it certainly deserves our attention. Archaeology is a form of story-telling but what kind of stories could and should we be writing about the deeper past?
According to JG Ballard, science fiction was ‘the most authentic literature of the twentieth century’, which seems apt for a time both obsessed with and anxious about technological progress. At first glance, therefore, it seems like the most modernist of genres. What could it possibly have in common with prehistoric archaeology? Yet I would like to suggest there are points of contact between the different ends of the time continuum - prehistorians constructing narratives from material evidence of a distant past and sf writers imagining how future societies in galaxies far, far away might respond to particular ecologies or technologies.
In this presentation I will try and explore the relationship between ‘world-building’ in science fiction and prehistory. I begin with that quintessential pioneer, HG Wells, who wrote not only The Time Machine and other speculative futures, but also global histories and tales of the remote past. However, we need not limit ourselves to those authors who have also shown an interest in the past. Taking inspiration from Fredric Jameson’s provocatively titled Archaeologies of the Future, about the Utopian aspect of science fiction, we could ask whether in either prehistory or sf we are doing much more than write about ourselves. Nevertheless, I suggest a study of the tropes, styles and settings of science fiction can provide interesting and, hopefully, entertaining insights into how we might represent people of the past who were both like us and not like us, and why such reflections matter.
This is Archaeology: Nina Frances Layard and queering archaeology.
ONLINE - Tuesday 25th July 2023 at 7pm
This event is free as part of the 2023 Festival of Archaeology.
In this lecture, I will explore the archaeological writings of Nina Frances Layard published in the East Anglian Daily Times from 1890 onwards. I will demonstrate the ways in which Layard integrates queer approaches in her archaeological excavation practices as well as in the broader methodical practices of archaeological work. Throughout her life, Layard often travelled and excavated with her partner, Mary Outram and displayed gestures of queerness in her archaeological practices. In highlighting accounts of their shared experiences of excavating in various sites, I will also show how Layard’s writings emphasises the experiences of excavating and brings into focus the experiences of those people whose lives she excavates. These approaches are also reflected in how Layard demonstrates more intimate relations with the objects she excavated. Paying attention to the different discursive strategies Layard participated in allows us to decentre narratives of popular, imperial excavations, often led by middle class-men which dominated newspapers and periodicals from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
Warrior Treasure: the Staffordshire Hoard in Anglo-Saxon England
ONLINE - Thursday 9th November 2023 at 7pm
When the Staffordshire Hoard was discovered in 2009, it caused an international sensation. Nearly 6 kilos of gold and silver objects, many decorated with blood-red garnets, make it the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon precious metal ever discovered, and unparalleled in scale and type. Buried in an unprepossessing field in the West Midlands, the discovery- the most significant Saxon discovery since Sutton Hoo in 1939- took everyone, experts and the general public alike, by surprise.
This talk tells the remarkable story of the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard, and the large-scale research project which followed. A decade of investigation now allows key questions about the Hoard to be considered: how did the golden ornaments come together, where were they made and what happened to their elite owners, who might have owned and buried them, never to return, and when did it all happen? The talk places the hoard within the context of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, and discusses how it relates to the cycle of conflict that history records across 7th-century Britain, as rival pagan and Christian kingdoms fought for supremacy.
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:
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Valuable Visuals: The Roles of Traditional and Digital Imaging in Modern Archaeology by Dr Li Sou
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Building Ties Between Archaeology and the Public at Ilorin, Northern Yorubaland, Nigeria: A Nigerian Archaeologist's Perspective by Bolaji Josephine Owoseni
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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.
Dead Isle: Endangered heritage Ecologies
This talk is about a new project that brings together archaeology, art and ecology. It focused 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 Lesley McFayden 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?
Footmarks: A Journey into our Restless Past
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.