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Beginnings: The Archaeology of Prehistory

Overview

  • Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
  • Convenor: Dr Tim Reynolds
  • Assessment: a 500-word primary source analysis (17%), 500-word modern scholarship summary (17%) and 2000-word essay (66%)

Module description

Prehistory is the story of how we became human. On this module we address key issues in the study of prehistory, focusing on the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze ages, and exploring themes such as:

  • settlement and mobility
  • the character of landscapes, including a field trip to Stonehenge
  • deposition of the dead and of artefacts
  • social identities and contact between groups
  • the architecture and significance of monuments and houses
  • prehistoric technology and subsistence.

During the module, we cover a long period of time during which ways of life changed radically, but with an emphasis on the relations people had with their landscapes, with objects and with each other. There will be an opportunity to explore prehistoric landscapes specifically through a visit to the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. More specifically, we consider:

  • mobility and the treatment of the dead in the Mesolithic
  • sedentism and the construction and domestication of the landscape, together with monumentality and the reproduction of social relationships in the Neolithic
  • the impact of metallurgy on exchange and deposition, the rise of individual identity and the changing character of landscapes in the Bronze Age.

In addition, we introduce you to the critical evaluation of the archaeological evidence for life in prehistory, and of the approaches and methods archaeologists have used to understand it.

Indicative syllabus

  • Origins of prehistory, antiquity and evolution
  • Backgrounds for prehistory
  • Origins of humanity
  • Origins of modern humans
  • Human: nature - an artifical divide
  • Mesolithic: different ways of living - questioning mobility
  • Neolithic: different ways of living - questioning sedentism
  • Bronze Age: different ways of living - questioning hierarchy
  • Deposition: material culture and architecure in later prehistory