Archaeology and History (BA)

Contemporary archaeology operates within a broad remit: its traditional focus on understanding a deep past is now supplemented by studies of more recent material cultures, and issues of heritage, representation and the politics of the past. All of these d...

Fieldwork is an integral part of the archaeological process and we want all our students to experience directly the generation of primary data by means of field and related practical activities. At the core of this module, therefore, is participation in a...

This module focusses on the city of Rome and its development from its early foundation through to the third century AD. It explores the evidence for one of the most important cities of the ancient world, which at its height was home to approximately a mil...

The disparate body of literature collected together under the title 1001 Nights, more popularly known as the Arabian Nights, is set primarily in the cities of the medieval Middle East, including Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, Cairo in Egypt and Damascus in Sy...

The Second World War ended more than seventy years ago, but the echoes and memories of the war still permeate modern British society, culture and politics. This course will explore the history of the Second World War in Britain, from appeasement to the el...

This module examines the variation within the mammalian skeleton from an evolutionary and functional perspective. Additionally, it gives an overview of the main methodological and theoretical issues in the retrieval, treatment and interpretation of bone f...

The development of absolute dating methods has had the most profound effect on our understanding of the past. All self-respecting archaeologists should have a basic grounding in radiocarbon dating, but many other dating techniques exist and are appropriat...

Archaeology is an immensely data-rich activity that records the characteristics of sites, landscapes and artefacts, sometimes in great detail. Making sense of that data often relies on quantitative or statistical methods to identify patterns, associations...

This module presents a history of post-war multicultural Britain through the lens of British film and television, considering how our attitudes to 'race', sexuality and British identity more generally have been defined, challenged and changed by film and...

How will the arts get working again after Covid-19? This is a critically important question for everyone who cares about them, artists and audiences alike. If you’re a student considering a career in the arts you’ll want to know where fresh opportunities ...

This module explores human evolution in the context of expanding and contracting populations. We shall review the evolutionary landscape and the big questions that face archaeologists. We shall cover the hominin fossil record, learning about the major spe...

This module gives students a practical understanding of the importance of the questions of immigration, race and ethnicity in France.

This module will discuss Chinese history from its mythical beginnings to the 19th century (the time when China encountered the West). We will encounter famous figures like the philosopher Confucius, discuss the origins of the Silk Road and the Great Wall,...

How did less than two thousand British officials rule an Indian population of three hundred million? Why did the words gymkhana, bungalow and shampoo enter the English language? What was the significance of the British constructing clock towers in numerou...

The 10,000 years from the end of the last glacial to the emergence of Roman as a major European power were marked by dramatic changes in subsistence, social organisation, material worlds and cosmology. This module provides an introduction to the major the...

Since the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980s, the modern world has witnessed the emergence of Islamist states and powerful Islamist political movements including in West Asia and the Near and Middle East: the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Is...

This course aims to give students a sound introduction to the way archaeology is carried out underwater.

What are myths and what do they do? In “Myth and the Ancient World” you will explore how the Ancient Greeks used myths to make sense of the world and their position in it. The module covers a time span of some 900 years, from the time of Homer and Hesiod ...

In 1948, Daniel Malan’s National Party took power in South Africa. Malan’s election victory over the Jan Smuts-led United Party and Labour Party alliance was only a slender one, and few of the National Party’s opponents could have envisaged that it would ...

During his lifetime Charles II was described as charming, indolent and a womaniser, while his court was seen as far more informal than that of his father, Charles I. This module will seek to assess the validity of this view and it will consider the challe...

Early modern England is a period associated with Elizabeth I and the Tudor court, the plays of Shakespeare, blood and violence on the Jacobean stage, the discovery of new worlds, and the persecution of witches and heretics. The diversity and vitality of t...

For the United States, the turn of the twentieth century was a turbulent, transformative time: an age of embattled political parties and insurgent Populists, mass immigration and overseas war, millionaire capitalists and impoverished farmers, all set to t...

We are all, in one way or another, participants in the consumer society. Whether we buy for necessity - life essentials such as food - or view it as an enjoyable leisure activity, our purchase of goods is part of a wider cultural movement pushing us to ‘s...

For most people even today Nero was one of the ‘bad’ emperors (he killed his mother), and Caligula was mad and depraved (he wanted to appoint his favourite horse as consul, and committed incest with his sisters); but the categorisation of emperors along m...

The 1960s were a time of rapid social, political and cultural change in Britain. The decade saw Britain – and especially London – finally steal the crown of cool from the United States. British pop culture exploded and was exported around the world. With ...

This module begins with an assessment of the legacy of Lenin and goes on to investigate Stalin's rise to power and his methods in modernising economy and society. We will engage with historical debates concerning his role in the purges of the 1930s and th...

The Age of Discovery explores the maritime expansion of Europe from c.1350-c.1650 through the experiences of four European states: Portugal; Spain; England and the Netherlands. It therefore covers the transition of these states from medieval polities to R...

The course seeks to provide an overview of the evolution of the European Union (EU) from its early stages to the present. In so doing, it examines the ideas and history of the EU, the institutions of the EU, examples of specific issue areas and the presen...

By the middle of the eleventh century, the various nations of the British Isles were characterised by quite distinct cultures and political and economic systems and elites. Yet the relationships between the various nations were entirely redrawn between ab...

This module examines changing notions of British (and, more specifically, English) national identity in relation to issues of race, ethnicity and immigration from the 1840s to the present day.

The Roman empire has held the imagination of successive generations. Conquest by Rome brought social, cultural and economic change to large swathes of what is now Europe, the Middle East and north Africa. Never before or after did these parts of the world...

Anne Boleyn, Louis XVI, Roger Casement, Vidkun Quisling: these are notorious figures who have been tried and executed for treason. Through the centuries ‘treason’ has always been one of the most serious crimes, as well as being a term of abuse in politics...

“On 13 December 1838, on a cold and rainy night, a man of athletic build, dressed in a shabby jacket, crossed the Pont au Change and penetrated into the Cité […]. That night the wind was blowing violently through the alleyways of this dismal neighbourhood...

This module will introduce you to German metropolitan culture and politics in the 20th century with particular reference to Vienna and Berlin, using a wide range of sources which will include literature, film and architecture.

From 1793, for more than 20 years, Britain and her allies were almost continually at war, first against the armies of revolutionary France, then against Napoleon and the combined forces of his empire. Initially this was an ideological struggle — the terro...

This module offers you the opportunity to study the history of witchcraft in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (the period during which the great majority of prosecutions and executions for that supposed crime took place). On the modu...

The dissertation is a key component of your degree, and the culmination of your programme of study. It provides an opportunity to demonstrate the skills of planning, research, data collation, analysis, and communication that you have learned during your p...

The dissertation is a key component of your degree; in it you have a chance to show the skills of analysis and research you have learned during the three years of your course.

Wars have been fought throughout the history of mankind. Ethical concerns that they raised, or, in other words, the rights and wrongs of waging war, have been discussed from time immemorial. War has often been seen as an evil, a necessary evil, to be avoi...

Is sex a biologically-conditioned experience that remains constant over place and time, or is sex and sexuality an ever-changing lived reality that reflects (and shapes) broader shifts within society and culture? This overarching question, fiercely debate...

As the world responds to the global financial crisis, populist leaders have come to dominate political debate in countries across the world - from India to the United Kingdom to the United States. In engaging with this phenomena, we are faced with a conun...

This unit introduces you to some key definitions and concepts before providing an overview of the main phases of immigration in France from the 1880s to the late 1940s.

Seafaring lies at the heart of human activity across the world and has taken place from the earliest times to the present day. Reflecting this, in recent years the study of seafaring has become an increasingly important area in our understanding of the hu...

This module explores human evolution in terms of physiological, social and cultural adaptations. It explores human ecology in the broad sense, combining not just cultural and social variability, but also physiological adaptations in past and present-day h...

Julian was sole emperor of Rome for scarcely twenty months, dying in 363CE at the head of his army during a spectacularly miscalculated invasion of modern-day Iraq. His short life and untimely death ensured that he has remained an enigmatic figure: a warr...

What was life like for a generation left behind by the changing cultural tides during the last decades of the Roman empire? With the death of Julian in 363CE, paganism was never again endorsed by a Roman emperor; moreover, it was tainted by association wi...

This module provides an introduction to early Stuart England and explores the troubled reign of King Charles I before the English Civil War.

This module investigates the events of the English Civil War of 1642-46 and explores the effects which that conflict had on the ordinary people of England and Wales.

This module aims to acquaint you with Geographic Information Systems including their use for mapping and analysing archaeological sites and landscapes, and to explain the broader context of their application to a range of archaeological research and manag...

How will the arts get working again after Covid-19? This is a critically important question for everyone who cares about them, artists and audiences alike. If you’re a student considering a career in the arts you’ll want to know where fresh opportunities ...

Iron Age Europe witnessed the divergence of a ‘classical' Mediterranean world, whose culture included such features as states, towns, coinage and literacy, from a ‘barbarian' world to the north, where these features developed only much later, if at all. T...

One of the socially and culturally most significant consequences of transnational mobility is that urban populations in particular are increasingly multilingual: in global cities such as London, New York and Berlin there are speakers of hundreds of differ...

This module examines the major social, economic and cultural developments that took place in England during the period between c. 800 and c. 1100 AD. It makes use of evidence from diverse disciplines, including the study of documentary, archaeological, ar...

The towns in which the Romans lived are some of the most familiar features of the Roman world. Although they seem to look and feel like modern towns, they actually worked in quite different ways, a reflection of the fact that ancient Roman society was dis...

The extraction and characterization of ancient molecules and the measurement of stable and radioactive isotopes has revolutionized archaeology over the past two decades and remains at the cutting edge of archaeological science. From the the identification...

The module provides an introduction to the history and archaeology of ancient Egypt. The module provides a broad sweep of Egyptian history from the Predynastic through to later periods. It introduces aspects of death, burial and commemoration, compares an...

By the end of this module you will be familiar with digital photogrammetry in archaeology and the visualisation of photogrammetric datasets. You will also have a basic grounding in key methods in photogrammetry and be able to create accurate and detailed ...

In this module we will examine how knowledge about the past is presented in museum exhibition and display. We will look at current practices in exhibition design and discuss the contemporary literature on communicating heritage to a range of audiences. Yo...

The culmination of your history degree at Southampton will be the completion of your final year independent research dissertation (HIST3021 for History programmes or HIST3210 for Ancient History programmes). In this module you will learn how to apply the ...

The Neolithic period heralds some of the most momentous changes in human history; it is the period when prehistoric people began to live in permanent settlements and adopted agriculture. In Britain, this period is dominated by rich evidence for large monu...