Archaeology

Archaeology is the study of human societies through their physical remains: the objects, structures, landscapes, and biological traces that people leave behind. It spans from the earliest stone tools of our remote ancestors to the material culture of the twentieth century, and it uses a combination of fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and theoretical interpretation to reconstruct how people lived, what they believed, how they organised their communities, and how they related to the natural world. As a discipline, archaeology is both rigorously scientific and deeply humanistic, drawing on geology, biology, chemistry, history, and anthropology in service of understanding the human past.

At the University of Winchester, this three-year programme is taught by experienced archaeologists who provide stimulating and engaged teaching within a supportive environment. You will learn key fieldwork techniques and receive rigorous academic training, working with excellent field equipment that includes ground penetrating radar, magnetometers, magnetic susceptibility meters, differential GPS instruments, total stations, and an X-ray fluorescence analyser. This range of instrumentation reflects the increasingly technical and data-rich nature of modern archaeological practice, and your training with it will prepare you well for professional and research work in the field.

Archaeology graduates pursue careers in professional archaeology with commercial units, field archaeologists undertaking developer-funded work, heritage organisations, museums, national and local government, conservation, historic environment consultancy, academia, and research. The analytical, research, and project management skills the degree develops are also applicable in a wide range of other fields. Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in archaeological science, heritage management, palaeoanthropology, or related disciplines, and doctoral research is a common route for those who wish to specialise or pursue academic careers.