Classical Archaeology and Ancient History

Classical archaeology and ancient history together provide two of the most powerful ways of recovering and understanding the ancient world. Ancient history works with written sources, analysing the texts of Greek and Roman historians, orators, philosophers and poets to reconstruct political events, social structures, economic life and cultural attitudes across the ancient Mediterranean. Classical archaeology works with the physical remains of ancient civilisations, from pottery, coins and sculpture to buildings, tombs and entire urban landscapes, recovering information that written sources cannot provide and giving material reality to the world of antiquity.

At the University of Edinburgh this four-year programme develops your skills in both disciplines, with access to the university's excellent collections and to the scholarly depth of a research-intensive ancient studies department. You will study the history of Greece and Rome across the classical period and beyond, engaging with primary sources and with the methods, debates and theoretical frameworks of modern ancient history. The archaeology component introduces you to field methods, artefact analysis, landscape survey, the study of ancient material culture and the theoretical and ethical questions that archaeology raises.

The programme includes a year abroad that allows you to study in a different academic environment and, potentially, to engage directly with archaeological sites and museum collections in Greece, Italy or elsewhere in the Mediterranean world.

Graduates go on to work in museums, heritage organisations, archives, education, academic research, publishing and arts journalism, as well as in the civil service and a wide range of other careers where the research, analytical and communication skills that this degree develops are valued. Many continue to postgraduate study in classics, ancient history, classical archaeology, museum studies or heritage management. The combination of textual and material approaches to the ancient world produces graduates with an unusually rich and multi-dimensional perspective on one of the most formative periods in human history.