Admissions

UCAS Course Code: VV14

Brief Course Outline

Duration of course: 3 years
Degree awarded: BA
Intake: 17
Applications shortlisted for interview: 87.1%
Successful applications: 27.1%

Open days

See Classics for further information.

Contact details

Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LU
+44 (0) 1865 288391
Please email us at enquiries@classics.ox.ac.uk
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Classical Archaeology and Ancient History

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Fieldwork and international opportunities

There are two practical elements – two weeks at the end of the first year spent either on a University-sponsored excavation or on another archaeological field project, and the preparation of a report in the second and third years focusing either on a particular ancient site or on an artefact or set of artefacts in a museum of your choice, from the Ashmolean to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

A typical weekly timetable

During the first year, your work is divided between lectures (about four to six a week), team-taught classes (one a week for the first two terms), tutorials (one every week or two) and/or language classes and private study. In the second and third years, besides lectures, tutorials and classes, you will also spend time preparing your museum or site report.

In your second and third years, leading up to your final exams, you build on the work done in the first year and expand your range in time and theme. You will take six options and a site or museum report (equivalent to one paper). The options are chosen from a list of: Integrated Classes, which bring together historical and archaeological approaches to a particular period; Core Papers, which deal with central topics in Greco-Roman studies; Further Papers, whose range allows you either to build up concentrated expertise in some central areas and periods or to extend into earlier and later periods, and into non-classical cultures; and Classical Language Papers, which allow you to continue the study of Greek or Latin.

1st year
Courses Four courses are taken. Core elements: Aristocracy and democracy in the Greek world, 550–450 BC Republic to empire: Rome, 50 BC to AD 50 Optional elements: Archaeology: Homeric archaeology and early Greece, 1550-700 BC; Greek vases; Greek sculpture, c.600-300 BC; Roman architecture History: Thucydides and the West; Aristophanes’ political comedy; Cicero and Catiline; Tacitus and Tiberius Ancient Languages: Beginning Ancient Greek, Beginning Latin, Intermediate Ancient Greek, Intermediate Latin	Assessment First University examinations: Four written exam papers
2nd and 3rd year
Courses Six courses are taken from a wide choice of options, including: Early Greece and the Mediterranean, 950–550 BC Rome, Italy, and the Hellenistic East, 300–100 BC Greek art and archaeology, c.500–300 BC Roman archaeology: Cities and settlement under the Empire Art under the Roman Empire, AD 14–337 Archaeology of the late Roman Empire, AD 284–641 Thucydides and the Greek world, 479–403 BC Alexander the Great and his early successors Roman history 146–46 BC Politics, society and culture from Nero to Hadrian Egyptian art and architecture Archaeology of Minoan Crete, 3200–1000 BC Formation of the Islamic world, AD 550–950 Scientific methods in archaeology Greek and Roman coins Mediterranean maritime archaeology Epigraphy of the Greek and/or Roman world Athenian democracy in the classical age Sexuality and gender in Greece and Rome Cicero: Politics and thought in the late Republic Religions in the Greek and Roman world, c.31 BC–AD 312 St Augustine and the Last Days of Rome, 370-430 Intermediate ancient Greek, Intermediate Latin Research for site or museum report	Assessment Final University examinations: Six written papers; one site or museum report