Archaeology and Anthropology with Study Year Abroad

Archaeology and anthropology are two of the most wide-ranging ways of understanding human life. Archaeology reconstructs past societies through their physical remains, from monumental sites and buried cities to the humblest fragments of pottery and bone, while anthropology examines the extraordinary diversity of human cultures, social structures, beliefs, and practices across the world today. Together they offer an unusually complete picture of what it means to be human across time and space.

At the University of Reading you will study both disciplines in dialogue, building a set of intellectual tools that allows you to move between the material and the cultural, the ancient and the contemporary. You will learn archaeological field methods, approaches to the analysis of artefacts and ecofacts, and the theoretical frameworks that allow archaeologists to draw social and historical conclusions from physical evidence. The anthropological strand introduces you to ethnographic methods, cross-cultural comparison, and the key debates in social and cultural theory.

You will encounter questions about kinship, religion, economy, identity, and power from perspectives that are genuinely comparative.

This is a four-year full-time programme that includes a year abroad as part of the degree, placing you in a different academic environment and giving you the chance to engage with new cultural and intellectual perspectives at first hand. The year abroad is an integral part of the degree and a significant asset in any subsequent career or academic application.

Graduates go on to careers in archaeology, heritage management, museums, international development, NGOs, journalism, education, and the civil service. The combination of fieldwork skills, cultural analysis, and international experience is also excellent preparation for postgraduate study in archaeology, social anthropology, development studies, and related fields.