Archaeology and Anthropology

As part of your course you are required to undertake at least three weeks of fieldwork on a project that you will select for yourself. Advice is available from your college tutor and from members of the Schools of Archaeology and Anthropology. Your fieldwork, which must be approved by the Standing Committee that runs the degree, may be anywhere in the world – South Africa, the Andes and Georgia are recent destinations. For most people it is likely to take an archaeological form on either an excavation or as part of a field-survey team, but museum-based work and participation in primatological or social anthropological fieldwork are also possible. Further archaeological fieldwork may be provided by the School of Archaeology in the form of a compulsory training excavation. Financial support for this fieldwork is available from the University and may also be available from your college. In the first term of your second year you will write a report on the fieldwork that you have undertaken. You may also engage in fieldwork as part of your final year dissertation, while other opportunities may exist for work-based learning in the University’s museums.

Your work is divided among lectures, tutorials and practical classes. In the first year, you will spend about six hours a week in lectures, closely tied to the course’s core papers. Lectures for core and option papers take up about ten hours a week in years 2 and 3. Throughout the course, there are one or two tutorials per week (normally a total of 12 in each term).