Ancient History and Archaeology BA

This module offers what may well prove a unique opportunity: the opportunity to engage in prolonged, intensive and productive study of a topic which you have chosen for yourself and on which you will be working very much on your own terms with access to advice and subject to criticism and, on completion, assessment.

This module is built on skills acquired and/or developed in your first and second years (notably in Extended Source Study, Studying Classical Scholarship or Communicating the Past).

This module is primarily dependent on your personal research: it involves a few plenary sessions of formal teaching, and each student is allotted an individual supervisor to guide them through the process.

These two modules are for complete beginners. They are also suitable if you have already done some study of Latin or Classical Greek (up to GCSE level). They cover the same material as ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 1’ and ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 2’. They just let you start your chosen language at a later point in your degree.

You’ll get an introduction to the grammar and vocabulary of your chosen language and you will be supported to analyse and understand basic sentences and to translate short passages.

There is no speaking and listening element - the main focus will be on reading text.

If you take these modules in your second year, you can continue onto the ‘Intermediate’ modules in your third year. Note: this is mandatory for Classics BA students.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This is a discipline-bridging cross-campus module, involving colleagues from across the School of Humanities.

The Silk Road will be presented as a range of archaeological, historical and scientific themes. Broad cultural themes will be balanced with the presentation of specific case studies, such as:

• The definitions of the Silk Roads
• Byzantine, Islamic and later medieval Silk Roads
• Luxury production
• Trade and exchange from the Roman and later periods
• Ming Dynasty links with the West

Scientific techniques for the analysis of materials, and their role in the interpretation of trade and exchange along the Silk Roads, will also be considered. This could be between, for example, China, central Asia, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Read more about this module.

This module examines Britain in the later-Roman Empire. It is a fascinating period of prosperity, integration, and sophistication. Yet it is also marked by rebellion, civil war, and the sundering of the links that had bound Britain to the continent so deeply for so long.

We will cover from the crisis that marked the middle years of the 3rd century, to the disappearance of Roman power in the early 5th, and the rapid economic collapse and social transformation that followed.

You will take an interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological and historical evidence, and will be expected to familiarise yourself with a wide range of evidence.

We will examine:

• the political framework of the later-Roman Empire
• the textual and archaeological evidence for Britain’s society and economy
• the barbarian peoples who threatened and interacted with it
• the question of how it ended up leaving the Roman Empire

You will also consider the integration of different types of source material, thinking about Britain’s place in the wider world in a broader context.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module will consider: The history of Sparta from its origins in the archaic period through to its decline as a leading Greek power in the fourth century BC, with major events including: the ‘sixth-century revolution’; Sparta’s territorial expansion within the Peloponnese; Sparta’s leading role in resisting the Persian invasions; Sparta’s rivalry with Athens during the fifth century, culminating in the Peloponnesian War; the period of Spartan hegemony; Thebes’ rise and Sparta’s fall.

Spartan society, its institutions and cultural idiosyncracies, including: the communal upbringing; the communal dining of Spartan males; the Spartan political, property, and military systems; the position within Spartan society of helots, other subordinate groups, and women; Spartan attitudes towards war, wealth, religion, age, and outsiders.

The significant challenges posed by our available evidence, the issue of the ‘Spartan mirage’, and the fundamental question of how far we can hope to reconstruct Sparta and Spartan society.

Any reassessment for this module will be by essay or assignment.

The early modern period witnessed the birth of commodity culture and the transformation of the relationship between people and their material world.

Expanding global trade networks and early colonial encounters brought a range of exotic products into early modern homes, including spices, sugar, tea, tobacco, cotton, porcelain and mahogany, while the rise of capitalism and industrialisation revolutionised the manufacture and availability of necessities and luxuries across the social spectrum.

The richness of this ‘new world of goods’ had profound consequences, transforming patterns of consumption, introducing new understandings of scientific knowledge and cultural production, and reshaping social identities and relationships based on class, gender and race.   

This module takes advantage of a sweep of new interdisciplinary perspectives across a range of subject areas, including social, economic and cultural history, archaeology, anthropology and art history, which have focused on the role and significance of early modern ‘things’.

You will gain a grounding of central themes in early modern history, as well as a deeper understanding of the importance of looking at early modern Europe as part of a globalising world. You will explore a range of textual sources including wills and inventories, account books, letters and diaries which tell us about expanding global connections, what people consumed and how they thought about their objects.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module explores the urban image and visual culture of the best-preserved ancient Roman city, Pompeii, throughout the early imperial period and to its end in AD 79. It examines its history and topography, and analyses individual urban structures, architectural choices, sculptural and other artistic displays and monuments, their place in Roman urban development, their political, social, economic or religious function and their subsequent use and influence, including in the modern reception of ancient Pompeii. 

Topics include:

• problems of studying "urban fabric"
• Pompeii as a melting pot of different cultural traditions
• public and religious spaces in a Roman town (fora and temples, routes through the city, trade and commerce, sculptural/pictorial displays)
• entertainment and hygiene (theatres, baths and brothels)
• the domestic context (intra- and extra-mural living, interior decoration and wall-painting)
• the funerary sphere (self-representation and cultural traditions).

This module will examine what we can learn from the human skeleton, about the lives of people who lived in the past. We will also include some basic zooarchaeology to understand the similarities and differences between these two specialisms. The module will involve handling real archaeological human and non-human skeletons, learning how to identify their age, sex, stature, pathologies and taphonomy. We will also examine the demography of 19th century Nottingham on a fieldtrip to one of the city’s largest (and most atmospheric) cemeteries.

This module will introduce students to human and non-human skeletons, and the information that can be gained from them, including aging, sexing, stature, pathology and isotope analysis. Sampling strategies, data collection and analysis will also be covered using data collected by the students themselves on a fieldtrip. The aim of the module is to make students confident in handling human and zooarchaeological remains, to have the background necessary to undertake final year dissertations on either human remains or zooarchaeology, and to teach some basic data visualisation and analysis.

20 credits in the Spring Semester.

The module explores the archaeological evidence for the creation and nature of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian societies in England, from the withdrawal of the Late Roman imperial administration until the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest. A range of themes is explored. These include: the creation of Anglo-Saxon societies in different parts of England, from a combined heritage derived from northern Germany, southern Scandinavia and Britain itself; evidence of pagan beliefs and the conversion to Christianity; reflections of social hierarchy in rural settlement and cemetery evidence; transformations from central places to towns; political developments from the heptarchy to the unified Kingdom of England; the Viking impact on England in the ninth and tenth centuries; and eleventh-century England from the Danish to Norman conquests. 

You will critically examine themes in Near Eastern Prehistory. The themes take you from the development of agriculture, pastoralism and sedentism to the appearance of the first cities, states and writing. Drawing directly from current research, you will use case studies to examine these themes. You will use archaeological evidence to understand how these developments are reflected in social, religious, economic and political organisations of the prehistoric Near East. You will attend weekly lectures and seminars. After appropriate guidance, you will take part in learning activities includes:

• setting readings
• presenting
• running classroom discussions.

You will receive feedback on these participatory activities. You will write an essay for your formal assessment.

In the early 20th century, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans’s excavations at the site of Knossos on the island of Crete uncovered the remains of the earliest palatial civilisation in Europe. Knossos, the home of the mythical king Minos and the monstrous Minotaur, became the landmark of a new culture termed as ‘Minoan’. Based on a combination of lectures and workshops, this module introduces students to the origins of the Aegean complex societies from the late 4th millennium BC and to the rise, apogee and fall of the Minoan palatial, state-level societies of the 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC. It investigates the Aegean region’s long-term transformations using archaeological material, iconography and archival data, and encourages the thematic treatment of major social, cultural, political and economic processes such as the Neolithic antecedents; the organisation of proto-urban societies during the Early Bronze Age; transformations and developments during the Middle Bronze Age; palace state formation on Crete; production, trade and consumption in and beyond the island (including: materials and industries, frescoes and the minor arts, textiles and dyes, perfumed oils); introduction and development of administration and early writing; archaeologies of cult and death; the eruption of Thera/Santorini; and the role of the Minoans within the wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern world during the Bronze Age.

This module provides a survey of developments in the Aegean region from the late 4th millennium BC to the early 2nd millennium BC, and considers them within their wider political, economic and social context. By studying and interpreting the surviving archaeological evidence, iconography and written sources, this module will allow students to develop a critical understanding of Greek prehistory and of the developments that led to the rise and fall of the Minoan palatial system, the earliest of its kind in Europe. By the end of the module, students should have gained an understanding of the broad cultural sequence in the Aegean area, of current interpretations and debates in Aegean prehistory, and of broad diachronic and regional trends in the development of human societies in the region between the late 4th and early 2nd millennia BC.

This module examines a fascinating and tumultuous period of Roman history: from Diocletian’s seizure of power (A.D. 284) to the sack of Rome by a Visigothic army (A.D. 410). In the 126 years which separated these two events, the Roman world was fundamentally transformed, by (amongst other things) the rise of Christianity and the decline of imperial power. This transformation is documented for us by a range of captivating sources: from St. Augustine’s disarmingly frank autobiography, his Confessions, to Zosimus’ savage indictment of the damage he alleged Christianity had done to the empire.

Over the semester, we will work our way through the period, looking at key political, social, religious, and cultural developments and analysing the source material for this absorbing chapter in Rome’s imperial story.

This module involves a detailed study of Virgil's Latin epic poem, the Aeneid, in English translation, and focuses on its interactions with the epic genre.

The Aeneid was always and immediately characterised as a 'great' poem: how does Virgil react against his predecessors to carve out his own literary territory? How is the Aeneid received and re-used by poets and other artists down the ages?

Themes will include:

• career and poetics
• Homer and Apollonius
• reception in later epic (Roman imperial, Neo-Latin, Milton)
• politics and identity
• games and reality
• gender and genre
• vision and spectacle.

This module will explore the ancient evidence for the myth of Oedipus and selected representations of the myth in the post-Classical world.

In terms of evidence, students will have the opportunity to explore ancient drama and other poetry as well as visual culture and mythographic writings.

In terms of post-Classical representations, there will be a particular focus on performance and on modern popular culture, including (but not necessarily limited to) film, popular mythology books, material aimed at children, on-line representations, and humour.

This module explores the representation of animals in ancient Greek and Roman literature and culture. Core questions include:

• What criteria did the Greeks and Romans use to distinguish humans from animals?
• What responsibilities were human beings said to have towards the natural world?
• How were animals used to explore ideas about ‘nature’, ‘culture’, and ‘civilisation’?
• How close are these ideas to our contemporary attitudes toward non-human beings?

While incorporating discussion of material evidence and the day-to-day realities of animal life in the ancient world, the module focuses primarily on the ways in which animals were perceived, analysed, and represented in ancient texts, from philosophy and natural history to satire, fable, and tales of metamorphosis. Both ancient and modern theoretical approaches will be considered, and all material will be read in translation.

During the period 800-500 BC the Greek world transformed from a collection of relatively small communities led by local strongmen to complex city-state societies with elaborate institutions, magistracies, and systems of public finance. Law shifted from an oral to a written basis; Greek settlements spread across the Mediterranean basin and Black Sea; and Greek individuals travelled to Egypt and the east, fuelling a process of dynamic cultural fusion. This period was, too, the crucible from which emerged remarkable works of literature, art, and the beginnings of Greek philosophy.

But it was an era of conflict and disruption as much as cultural and economic progress. Major inequalities in wealth between rich and poor led to social breakdown in many communities. The solutions were various: in Attica, Solon attempted to reshape Athenian institutions to place the poor in a stronger position and curb some of the more egregious abuses inflicted by the wealthy. In Sparta, a culture of material austerity emerged that hid from plain sight the visible aspects of inequality whilst maintaining the economic structures that underpinned elite dominance. For some Greek communities, the answer to these problems lay in entrusting one man with the direction of the community, that is, tyranny, which led to disaster in places like Athens and the emergence of the institutional outlines of the classical democracy. And warfare was rife: the archaic age saw the emergence on land of the tactics of the hoplite phalanx, and at sea the development of the trireme and the fiscal structures that underpinned the first state-owned navies.

This module will enable students to chart continuity and change during the epoch in which the contours of classical Greek society were firmly established. It will focus in particular on the interpretative strategies required in evaluating a highly diverse body of evidence and the methodological problems that challenge historians when reconstructing an era whose evidence is far more lacunose that that which survives for the ensuing periods

This module will consider:  

• the Persian Empire, and in particular contacts between Persians and Greeks in the approximate period 560-330 BC  
  
• major events including: the foundation of the empire by Cyrus the Great; the consolidation of the empire by Darius; the Ionian Revolt and the invasions of Greece; the Delian League and the Peace of Callias; the Peloponnesian War; the Peace of Antalcidas; Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire  
  
• major themes regarding the interactions between Greeks and Persians, including military and political conflict, but also trade and cultural engagement  
  
• Greek literary evidence, and the diverse representations of Persians and the Persian Empire presented in it  
  
• non-Greek evidence for the Persian Empire, including cuneiform writings, inscriptions, and visual evidence. 

This module will be questioning how various film presentations of the ancient world can be used to better understand both the ancient world itself and our relationship to it.

This will involve a critical understanding not just of the content of certain films but also of the related theories of cultural studies, reception studies, film theory, queer theory, semiotics, race and colonialism, sexuality and morality in both the ancient and modern world. As such this module will be heavily theoretical and will expect the students to be able to deal with complex issues not just about the ancient world, but of modern film production too. This also means that the module will have more teaching hours attached to it than other optional modules to accommodate the extra viewings for discussions.

Amongst the themes to be discussed will be the use of Greek mythology, Greek and Roman historical events, ancient religion, ancient sexuality, morality, special effects, new technologies and comparative cultural studies; all the while dealing with such case-studies as post-War European cinema, British Art House cinema, Hollywood Blockbusters and comedy and animation.

The module will be assessed by a source-analysis commentary and an exam. 

The Roman Empire was a mad, mad place! How else would you call an empire where any individual city can decide it wants to start issuing its own money – and the authorities let them do it? A place where hundreds of cities produced hundreds of currencies of local bronze coinage, each city with its own weight standards, and each using its coinage for self-promotion, celebrating local gods, temples, festivals and any other attractions that made their hometown special.

According to one calculation, some 500 cities across the Roman Empire minted coins in the 350 years from Caesar to Diocletian, churning out approximately 100,000 different coin types. This module is all about this city or ‘civic’ coinage. We won’t have quite enough time in this life to discuss 100,000 coin types, so we focus especially on what we call the Near East, i.e. Roman Syria, Phoenicia, Judaea and Arabia (30 BC to AD 270). Dozens of Near Eastern cities produced coins during this time, contributing to an immensely rich and varied tapestry of local cultures.

We will first grapple with the historical circumstances which put cities in a position to issue their own money despite being subject to Rome. The local autonomy the cities enjoyed was not a consequence of Roman folly, negligence, or administrative malpractice, but a deliberate and well-advised hands-off approach whose wisdom is proven by hundreds of years of stable and successful rule over the provinces.

In Coins, Cults and Cities, you will learn how the coins can shed light on the life of the issuing city in all its facets:

1. World of art: reception of Classical models; Greek-inspired art forms vs. local traditions; stylistic developments over time
   
2. Religious life, cults and gods: significance of religious imagery, local cult images, ‘icons of difference’
   
3. Civic pride, local identity: coins as vehicles for expressions of patriotism and public self-congratulation
   
4. Ideology and propaganda: coins as the only mass medium of the ancient world, as tools for collective self-promotion.
   
5. Complex dynamics between audience and authority: Who was responsible for text and image on coins? Who was the target audience?
   

You will get your hands on actual ancient coins of Damascus, Palmyra, Tyre, Sidon and many other cities (you get to choose which ones). Holding actual 2,000-year-old pieces of history in your own hands and examining them will teach you how to apply the knowledge and understanding you’ve gained in class to get the most out of the evidence. You will learn how to observe, analyse and interpret the evidence, and how to turn your thoughts and observations into building blocks for arguments when addressing questions or engaging in scholarly debate.

The civic coins of the Roman Near East have been the focus of my research for close to 20 years. Like me, you will find that these coins are inexhaustible fonts of insight and inspiration. There is no other kind of evidence from the Roman Near East even remotely as rich and deep as this coinage, and yet this precious source is unknown to the general public and under-appreciated even by historians and archaeologists.

In this module, we will study a varied selection of Greek tragedies from the fifth century BC, from a variety of critical perspectives.

These may include approaches such as:

• historicism (how do the tragedies fit into and interact with the world of the fifth century Athenian democracy?)
• performance (including the study of tragedy as a form of choral poetry)
• mythology and religion
• literary approaches (construction of plays, the representation of character, imagery).

Through approaches such as these and others, we will try to find ways of handling central tragic questions:

• why might we be attracted to watching the enactment of suffering?
• what did these profound, moving and frequently strange dramas mean in their own world and what can they mean in ours? 

This module uses literary, artistic and historical material to explore the idea of what it is to be a man and an accepted citizen in ancient Greece and Rome.

It explores how good citizens should behave and what should they look like.? How do they represent this citizenship to the rest of the world and how does this change over time? These questions bring literature, art and ancient history together with gender studies to examine the importance of gender in both bolstering and denigrating public personae.

Topics to be covered include:

• homoeroticism and Athenian identity
• dress and cultural identity
• sexual invective
• citizenship and empire
• Roman representation in the provinces
• women, politics and patronage.

The concept of the “Other” has proved extremely influential in Western culture from antiquity until the present. Societies create the “Self” and the “Other” using their own set of categories, including race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, age and religion.

This course explores the notion of “Otherness” in Greco-Roman visual culture from the eighth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D., discussing how artistic representation and self-representation contributed to constructing and challenging ideas about Greek and Roman identity.

How did the Greeks and Romans use art to construct the “Other” and what can we learn from these representations about the relationships between in-groups and out-groups in the ancient world?

The course also investigates the ways in which Classical art escapes the structuralist binary model of Self-and-Other, merging or inverting these categories. In a brief introduction we will discuss a variety of theories and methodologies that will help students to engage effectively with the visual evidence.

The first part of the course will focus on how different categories of “Other” were gradually shaped in ancient Greek art, reflecting contemporary political, social and cultural developments. We will look at images of hybrid creatures, foreigners, women, slaves, disabled and elderly people, analysing positive and negative connotations of their apparent “Otherness”.

In the second part of the course, we will explore the diversity of Roman visual culture from the Late Republican period to Late Antiquity. As the Empire expanded, images of “Otherness” acquired a broader spectrum of meanings. Sculpture, painting and mosaic decoration from public and private contexts show how “Otherness” could be either repressed or embraced in order to impose, resist or manipulate traditional views of Romanness.

The aim of this module is to teach practical skills in media engagement and management through lectures and workshops, running in parallel with examining how archaeological data are used in media narratives through seminars.  

The seminars will use a case study approach and staff will draw on their own experience with different forms of media, such as TV, radio, podcasts, print and social media.  

In the media engagement sessions we will teach skills such as: identifying a story, writing press releases, the importance of meaningful images, running a press conference, interviewing/ being interviewed, and writing article copy. We will also consider the differences between print and social media, and the importance of being succinct – a key skill!

Students will be able to choose the topic that they work on for their assessment, but all will engage in the in-class exercises. These will include scenarios such as being journalists at a press conference, and needing to write up the story that comes out of it. They will then submit these as part of their portfolio.

This group of modules is for those who have already reached A-level standard. They allow you to explore the work of Latin or Greek authors in detail.

You will also:

• improve your reading fluency
• gain insight into language and literature
• build linguistic analysis and literacy skills that are valued by employers

We pay special attention to language and style. Analysis of linguistic detail will build both your literary appreciation and your language skills.

Some modules will involve in-depth study of a single text, while others may cover a group of texts representative of an author, genre, period, or theme of Latin literature. All modules combine literary discussion with consideration of the historical and social background.

Regardless of whether you take Latin or Greek, the below applies:

Levels 1 and 2 are for first-year students: they involve a systematic programme of grammar revision alongside support with reading and analysis of the set text.

Levels 3 and 4 are for second-year students: they build on the previous year’s work, allowing you to read a larger amount of text and to develop your skills further.

Levels 5 and 6 are for third-year students: you will by now be able to read texts more independently, and assessment for these modules typically allows you to discuss the set text at greater length and with a high level of literary sophistication.

The texts covered change each year, but recent modules have focused on the following topics:

In Latin:

• Flavian personal poetry (Martial and Statius)
• The emperor Claudius (Suetonius and Tacitus)
• The Cupid and Psyche story from Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses
• Ethnicity and Empire in Latin Epic (Virgil and Silius Italicus)
• The Power of Love (Ovid and Propertius)

In Greek:

• Tragedy (Euripides’ Hecuba)
• Books from Homer’s Iliad
• Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe
• Plutarch’s Life of Antony
• Paradoxography (a portfolio of texts exploring the weird and marvellous)

These modules are mandatory for Classics BA students with an A-level in Latin or Classical Greek. Other students with A-level can choose to start with ‘Latin or Greek Texts’ at levels 1 and 2, but they may drop later modules if they wish.

Each module is worth 20 credits.

You will study prose and verse texts in your chosen language, building on the skills you learned in the Intermediate modules.

By this stage you will be at or above A-level standard, and will benefit from being taught together with first-year students who have an A-level in the language.

The modules may involve in-depth study of a single text, or may cover a group of texts representative of an author, genre, period, or theme. They will combine literary and linguistic discussion with consideration of the historical and social background.

The texts covered change each year. In Latin, recent modules have focused on the following topics:

• Flavian personal poetry (Martial and Statius)
• The emperor Claudius (Suetonius and Tacitus)
• The Cupid and Psyche story from Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses
• Ethnicity and Empire in Latin Epic (Virgil and Silius Italicus)
• The Power of Love (Ovid and Propertius)

In Greek, recent topics have covered:

• Tragedy (Sophocles’ Antigone)
• Selections from Homer’s Iliad
• Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe
• Plutarch’s Life of Antony
• Paradoxography (a portfolio of texts exploring the weird and marvellous)

Each module is worth 20 credits.

Continue your study of Latin or Classical Greek, following on from the beginners’ level modules.

You will thoroughly consolidate the vocabulary and grammar of your chosen language and begin the detailed linguistic and literary study of an unadapted Latin or Greek text.

In Latin, you will typically read a text such as Cicero’s Pro Archia, or a book of Virgil or Ovid.

In Greek, the text might be a complete speech by Lysias or selections from a longer text such as the Odyssey or a Greek tragedy.

The assessment for these modules emphasises comprehension and analysis of grammatical structures over memorisation and translation.

Each module is worth 20 credits.