"university" blog posts
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Barking Up the Right Tree - Updates from Deep Roots
Professor Larry Barham provides a fantastic update from the 'Deep Roots' project, and the award of Endangered Material Knowledge Programme funding for research into the archaeological use of bark. Professor Barham and his team's four year project investigates the deep roots of increasingly complex human behaviour in Africa, with excavations at key sites in Zambia.
Posted on: 16 June 2020
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Conversations in Human Evolution
Archaeology PhD student Lucy Timbrell tells us about Conversations in Human Evolution - her new public engagement initiative aimed at highlighting and exploring the diversity of human evolution studies, through fun and educational interview-style blog posts.
Posted on: 26 May 2020
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Locked Out! - Updates from Deep Roots
Professor Larry Barham provides an update from the 'Deep Roots' project under lock-down, from his lab in the garden. Professor Barham and his team's four year project investigates the deep roots of increasingly complex human behaviour in Africa, with excavations at key sites in Zambia.
Posted on: 19 May 2020
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After University: Graduate Pathways from ACE (Week 4)
In the fourth and final part of our series, we got in touch with Archaeology BSc and MSc graduate Edward Clark.
Posted on: 8 May 2020
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After University: Graduate Pathways from ACE (Week 3)
In the third part of our series, we got in touch with Palaeoanthropology MSc and Evolutionary Anthropology PhD graduate, Dr Shelley Farrar Stoakes.
Posted on: 1 May 2020
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After University: Graduate Pathways from ACE (Week 2)
In the second part of our series, we got in touch with Egyptology MA graduate Edward Lewis, to hear about his career pathways from student at the University of Liverpool to Head of Programme at Jersey Overseas Aid.
Posted on: 24 April 2020
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Free online Egyptology lectures and podcasts to keep you busy
For those of you with an interest in ancient Egypt, Egyptology PhD student Megan Clark has put together a list of free online Egyptology lectures and podcasts to check out.
Posted on: 23 April 2020

Stone Age memories
Professor Larry Barham visits Ormskirk West End Primary School to teach pupils about the Stone Age and the development of early tools.
Posted on: 7 April 2020

Celebrating the research of Professor John Gowlett
When and why did human ancestors begin to master fire? How did we come to have such large brains, or to develop language? Why did handaxes – such a fundamental element of the prehistoric archaeological record – persist for more than a million years? Do they reflect social norms or ‘design rules’ passed on from one individual to another? These questions – and many more – have been central to the research of our very own Prof. John Gowlett during the course of his career. And through John’s research, they have become central issues for understanding human evolution.
Posted on: 2 April 2020

Top Podcasts You Should Listen to Right Now
Sometimes throwing a podcast into the mix can be a really beneficial tool when studying.
Posted on: 25 March 2020

The Ancestral Shape Hypothesis
Dr Kimberly Plomp, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, explores the ancestral source of a problem faced by many people today: back pain.
Posted on: 17 March 2020
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Amelia Edwards: An International Women's Day Special
Amelia Edwards was a prominent travel writer and Egyptologist. On her travels throughout Egypt she famously wrote the travel text 'A Thousand Miles up the Nile' which provided a vivid and detailed account of the environment, monuments and local customs seen all over Egypt. In particular, Edwards' illustrations in this text opened up to new audiences the wonders and splendours of this little known country.
Posted on: 6 March 2020

Managing and interpreting Maori heritage: Pā today
Professor Harold Mytum concludes the blog series from his visit to New Zealand by exploring the relationship between the hill forts and contemporary Maori culture.
Posted on: 18 February 2020
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Vindaloo, Victorians, and Ancient Greek Colonisation Part 1: Hybridity
The Ancient Greek Colonisation and British Imperial Thought (ALGY336) module examines how academic understanding of ancient Greek overseas settlements was influenced by Victorian ideas of race, gender, and empire. This happened because British scholars made analogies between the ancient Greeks and the contemporary British Empire that they lived in, projecting their own imperialist values back onto history. Even the Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone said in the House of Commons that the British Empire should treat its colonies like the Greeks had done theirs. We then applied Postcolonialism to critically consider relationships between ancient Greeks and the Celts, Sikels, and Egyptians that they encountered.
Posted on: 12 February 2020

Exploring The Archaeology and Topography of Greece
Niamh Banner (BA Classical Studies with Spanish) shares her experience at the British School at Athens on their Undergraduate Course: a three-week intensive course exploring ‘The Archaeology and Topography of Greece’ with lectures at dozens of sites, museums and even artefact handling sessions in the BSA fitch laboratory.
Posted on: 10 February 2020

The Maori and Colonial contact: Pā in their landscape context
The more pā sites Harold Mytum has visited as part of the Hill Fort Study Group (HFSG) visit, and we learn of the early relationships with the British, the more it is clear that the indigenous groups wielded considerable influence in the early decades of contact. The ways in which the Maori leaders of iwi (the largest kinship grouping) used interactions with foreigners for their own social advantage are clear.
Posted on: 6 February 2020

Maori Pā: Hillforts from Prehistory to the Present
Harold Mytum has joined the Hill Fort Study Group (HFSG) study tour of sites in the North Island of New Zealand, home to the greatest concentration of Maori at the time of Captain Cook and indeed still so today.
Posted on: 31 January 2020

SACE Digging Day at the Williamson Tunnels
Following their trip to the Williamson Tunnels Heritage Centre, Megan Clark discusses a successful day spent digging by the Society of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology.
Posted on: 17 October 2019

Meet the Lecturer: Dr Frederick Jones ARBSA
Dr Frederick Jones is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. A specialist in Classic languages, Dr Jones is also an accomplished artist and is an Associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA). Find out how his work in Classics is intertwined with his art.
Posted on: 10 September 2019

Local school pupils explore the past at the Ancient Worlds Taster Day
The Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology was delighted to welcome Key Stage 3 students from Weatherhead High School to an Ancient Worlds Taster Day on 15 July 2019. Organised by the Liverpool Schools Classics Project and hosted by Dr Ross Clare, the students enjoyed a series of sessions themed around the ancient past before getting the opportunity to ask the speakers any questions they wished about the University experience.
Posted on: 9 August 2019

Hafting and the development of combinatorial technology
Professor Larry Barham of the University of Liverpool's Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology explains how the use of experimental archaeology can be used to uncover the history of hafting, which gave rise to the combinatorial technology we rely on today.
Posted on: 10 July 2019
Kindling the flames of knowledge
When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to the local library every week after school to look at books and magazines, and pick up new reads for the weekend. It was in those early bookish explorations how I first became fascinated by the Ancient World, and particularly by Egypt and her mysterious hieroglyphic script. I remember specifically one special issue of National Geographic that was devoted entirely to Ancient Egypt, with a wealth of photographs and illustrations that transported me several millennia back into the past. This magazine kindled a spark that developed over the years into a burning passion for Egyptology, which would in the end become my chosen career path.
Posted on: 27 June 2019

Follow the live-blog from our visit to Changchun, China
Members of the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology are currently in Changchun, China, to set up exchange links with the Northeast Normal University's Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (IHAC). Follow the live-blog from the trip, updated by student Elissa Day.
Posted on: 25 June 2019

Final Year Employment contest
At the end of last term, three successful graduates, who all got their degrees from the ACE, returned to the department to judge a final year presentation competition. Posing as a ‘Dragon’s Den’ of potential employers, the panel of experts were asked to judge six group presentations by teams of students on the third year module Greek Colonisation and British Imperial Thought (ALGY 336).
Posted on: 15 May 2019

Liverpool University archaeologist in Athens – Georgia not Greece
Professor Harold Mytum visited Athens as part of his collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Birch, Department of Anthropology, UGA, supported by a UGA- Liverpool faculty exchange initiative.
Posted on: 14 May 2019

CLAH Seminars: Aspects of Reception
Liverpool’s Classics degree has a strong interest in reception – but what is ‘reception’? In this blogpost, I review four speakers in the Classics and Ancient History seminars who, in four very different ways, showcase some of the ways ‘reception’ can be understood.
Posted on: 13 May 2019

From el-Amarna to the English National Opera
Earlier this month, 10 Liverpool Egyptology students (both undergraduate and postgraduate), undertook a two-day visit to London – part-funded by a faculty prize for the quality of our Egyptology teaching. The trip was heavily oversubscribed, and students were selected by random ballot for the trip. We arranged the excursion around a visit to the English National Opera (ENO) to see Philip Glass' opera Akhnaten, based on the controversial pharaoh who abandoned Egypt's traditional gods, and instead devoted himself to the worship of the sun.
Posted on: 2 April 2019

Guest speaker: Exploring evolution and entanglement
Two of our graduate students in Archaeology, Emily Prtak and Eleanor de Spretter Yates, reflect on our recent Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology (ACE) flagship seminar, on the theme of 'Evolution and Entanglement' featuring guest speaker Professor Ian Hodder (Stanford University):
Posted on: 8 March 2019

Classics and Ancient History seminars this semester: Sicily and rhetoric
The Classics and Ancient History seminars this semester have got off to a great start, with the emergence of a surprise emphasis on Sicily in our first two seminars.
Posted on: 4 March 2019

LGBT History Month - Homosexuality in Ancient Greece
This February in the department we have been reflecting about LGBT history, not least following the wonderful lecture by Prof Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on Alexander the Great. In this post, Dr Ben Cartlidge dwells on a puzzling feature of the ancient Greek evidence for male homosexuality.
Posted on: 27 February 2019

Alexander the Great or Alexander the Gay?
For LGBT history month, guest blogger Prof Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Chair of Ancient History, Cardiff University) asks: 'Alexander the Great or Alexander the Gay?' before his talk this week, exploring Alexander's sexuality and popular culture.
Posted on: 19 February 2019

End of an era: ACE’s Penycloddiau field school comes to a natural close
With the ACE field school now moved to Norton Priory, a small but perfectly-formed team completed the former field school site at the Penycloddiau Hillfort between 15 July - 11 August. The excavations worked to train eight students, in partnership with the Institute for Field Research (IFR Global), alongside onward employability training for recent graduates.
Posted on: 25 October 2018

Vandals and fragments: what to expect from our classics and ancient history seminars
Research Fellow, Ben Cartlidge, gives us the inside track on the varied themes covered in our Classics and Ancient History seminars at Liverpool - from ancient religion to music and poetry.
Posted on: 19 October 2018

New texts from an old site: discoveries from the September 2018 season at the Hatnub alabaster quarries
Roland Enmarch is Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool and co-director of the Anglo-French Hatnub Survey / Mission de Hatnoub, along with Dr. Yannis Gourdon (IFAO). In this blog, Roland provides an overview of his visit to Hatnub, Egypt, examining the ancient inscriptions in the site's alabaster quarries.
Posted on: 9 October 2018

Georgia's Archaeological Adventures in Alaska
Georgia Hetherington, second-year BSc Archaeology student, recently had the trip of a lifetime during a three week excavation in Alaska. Read her blog and discover some of her amazing experiences.
Posted on: 24 September 2018

Mary Beard comes to Liverpool!
This summer, Prof Mary Beard came to Liverpool to give two lectures on the Meroë head of Augustus from the British Museum - which was temporarily on display at the Victoria Gallery & Museum on campus.
Posted on: 17 August 2018

University Archaeology Day and London Anthropology Day 2018
This year, the University of Liverpool's Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology was represented at the British Museum as part of University Archaeology Day 2018 and London Anthropology Day 2018.
Posted on: 10 August 2018

Five things to do in Merseyside for anyone interested in Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology this summer
With summer now upon us, you might be looking for things to do in Merseyside before the start of the new term (trust us, this will come around very quickly!). While teaching may be over until September, there’s still plenty of things to do and see in the area that relate to Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology: from Neolithic monuments to Egyptian treasures…
Posted on: 7 June 2018

Studying the past for success in the future: tips and tricks to get the most out of your degree
Finishing university is daunting, especially when you’re not 100% sure which path you wish to take through life. For this reason, as a third year Evolutionary Anthropology student, I am always looking for new ways to improve my CV and ‘stand out from the crowd’. I have found plenty of opportunities through our Department, and so I have compiled some of the most crucial which have dramatically improved my applications.
Posted on: 19 April 2018

Chasing Rainbows: The Search for Gay Material Culture
After thinking about LGBT+ History Month 2018 last month, I thought it would be interesting to take a look how much archaeology can contribute to our understanding of gay history.
Posted on: 1 March 2018

From the Ancient World to the near future - skills that can help you stand out from the crowd!
How has one of our archaeology MA students been using her skills outside of university studies? Chloé Agar tells us more about how the content of her degree is helping her explore different career ideas for the future, outside of academia
Posted on: 29 January 2018

Our top tips to beat the Blue Monday blues this January
January blues can be tough. But what should you do when Blue Monday comes around when you're trying to prepare for your exams?
Posted on: 15 January 2018

ACE researcher in the spotlight: Dr. Shirley Curtis-Summers
I am currently an honorary research associate in ACE and since completing my PhD in 2015, I have held posts in ACE, History, Anatomy, Continuing Education and Public Health and Policy. I am also a consultant human osteologist, working with heritage companies and museums to provide human osteology assessments/reports and deliver public engagement events.
Posted on: 11 December 2017

Early Village Societies research group seminar series
The first seminar of the Early Village Societies research group for this academic year recently took place, where two of our PhD students presented on the first stages of their research.
Posted on: 1 December 2017

Surreal Egyptology and Egyptian Surrealism at Tate Liverpool
One of the things I have always been keen to explain, as both an Egyptologist and curator is that despite the popular view of the Egyptians as a civilisation obsessed with death, this is not exactly the case. They were obsessed with life.
Posted on: 30 November 2017

Spotlight: Professor Keith Dobney, Head of Department for ACE
As the (relatively) new Head of Department for ACE, I’m extremely happy to contribute another blog post here, to help celebrate and promote our great department. Make no mistake, we do have a lot to shout about; our long and colourful heritage of over 100 years, the distinctive combination of related disciplines, our newly refurbished facilities, a dynamic and world-class profile for teaching and research and, of course, a great staff and student body.
Posted on: 29 November 2017

Spotlight: Covering Neolithic botany to human skeletal anatomy - meet four of our researchers
This year we had a number of researchers land prestigious grants for their interesting and important work at ACE. Among these researchers, we have a few new postdocs who have written a brief introduction to the research they will be undertaking at ACE!
Posted on: 13 November 2017

Archaeology as public spectacle: the 1st Archaeology Convention in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The 1st Archaeology Convention took place in November at the National Museum of Antiquities in Riyadh, the capitol of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Posted on: 10 November 2017

Pets, Pests, & People: an evening of science and wine, discovering what animals have done for us
Thank you to everyone who attended the public event, Pets, Pests, and People held at the VG&M on Friday, October 13. We had over 80 people present for the talks and the drinks reception. I’d call that a success!
Posted on: 12 October 2017

Excavations, new skills and adventures in Halkidiki
In its time, Olynthos was an ancient classical Greek city in the Halkidiki region of modern-day Greece. The city sprawled across the two massive hills that dominate the surrounding landscape until its destruction in 348 BC by Philip II (Alexander the Great’s dad).
Posted on: 9 October 2017

A tale of two universities
Hey there, I’m Chloé. I’m studying Archaeology here in Liverpool this year. It’s been wonderful to get to know the department and the society over the last couple of weeks, after being so nervous about coming to a new university. As a thank you, I’m sharing my experiences about the transition between universities, and how postgraduate study compares to undergraduate study so far.
Posted on: 4 October 2017

Digging it: learning skills in the trenches at ACE’s 2017 field school
Liverpool’s field school took place at the Penycloddiau Hillfort excavations from 16 July-11 August this year – our final year at this site. The field school provides practical skills training for our 1st year undergraduates and international students from the Institute of Field Research (IFR Global), as well as onward employability training for recent graduates and postgraduate students.
Posted on: 25 September 2017

Putting the ace in SACE: join the Society of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology
As a 1st year undergraduate at the University of Liverpool, both the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, and the Society of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology (SACE) have played an instrumental role in my life at the university so far.
Posted on: 6 September 2017

Deep Roots: Day four of seven. Time to head out into the field
My first blog about preparing for the 'Deep Roots' research project looked at our initial work examining museum collections and locating key sites for excavation. This time, I'll be giving an insight into the ups and downs we encountered as we went out into the field...
Posted on: 26 June 2017

Deep Roots: An old jigsaw puzzle...with some key pieces missing
The ‘Deep Roots’ research project will begin in earnest in July 2017 with the first of four seasons of excavation. In the first of two blogs, I'll be giving you a behind the scenes look at the work we've been doing in preparation.
Posted on: 16 June 2017

Lost in the sand - investigating early humans and their tools in Zambia
Prof Larry Barham gives us a taste of what it's like to excavate in Zambia, as he heads off to begin new research into early humans and how they made tools.
Posted on: 4 May 2017

Student experience - discovering ancient and modern Greece
Archaeology student Jake Morley-Stone gives us the lowdown on his research in Greece and how The Chris Mee Mediterranean Travel Award enabled him to make the trip. Find out how this experience has transformed his research on Ancient Greece.
Posted on: 20 April 2017

A new way of exploring the past
Professor Keith Dobney was part of a team of researchers who recently made the exciting discovery of ancient DNA found in the dental plaque of Neandertals from Belgium and Spain.
Posted on: 17 March 2017

On this day in history: Julius Caesar assassination
Our Roman history expert, Fred Hirt, looks back on this pivotal moment in ancient history and the unusual way he was first introduced to Shakespeare's version of events.
Posted on: 15 March 2017

A passion for LEGO and archaeology
My latest research project has been inspired by my interest in digital humanities research, teaching methods - and a love of LEGO.
Posted on: 18 January 2017

Beat stress and visit these top places to chill out in Liverpool
January blues can be tough. But what should you do when Blue Monday comes around when you're trying to prepare for your exams?
Posted on: 16 January 2017