Taught courses

You will normally take six courses across two semesters of teaching, including a compulsory course and a range of optional courses.

Core course

The compulsory course provides a general introduction to graduate study in archaeology and give you the opportunity to develop your research skills.

The compulsory course for this programme is:

Course nameCredits
Research Sources and Strategies in Archaeology20

Optional courses

You will choose a further 100 credits from a wide selection of optional courses, subject to availability.  

Option Courses 2025-2026

* * Please note that the list of courses below is provisional and subject to change.  

Further information and course details can be found on the Degree Programme Table.

Course nameCredits
Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs: The Basics and Beyond20
Archaeological Illustration20
Archaeology of 'Celtic' Europe: Communities and Interactions20
Archaeomaterials Analysis20
Biomolecular Archaeology: the appliance of science20
Bronze Age Civilisations of the Near East and Greece20
Conflict archaeology: materialities of violence20
Data Science for the Past: Statistical Thinking & Visualization20
GIS and Spatial Analysis for Archaeologists20
Heritage Studies and the Archaeology of the Contemporary World: Investigating How the Past Shapes the Present20
Island Worlds: Prehistoric Societies in the Mediterranean Sea from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age20
Marine Archaeology20
Practical Zooarchaeology20
Ritual and Monumentality in North-West Europe: Mid-6th to Mid-3rd Millennium BC20
Roman Archaeology20
Social Bioarchaeology: Living Conditions, Lifestyles and the Impact of Disease in the Past20
Space, Place and Time: the archaeology of built environments20
The Archaeology of Children and Childhood20
The Athenian Akropolis20
The Hittites: The Archaeology of an Ancient Near Eastern Civilisation20
Themes in Egyptian archaeology: the foundations of the state to the end of the Middle Kingdom20
Ancient Egyptian Religion and the Afterlife (online) *20
The Archaeology of Technology: From Prehistory to the Present (Online) *20

*A maximum of one online course can be chosen.

Courses for those studying from September 2026 will be available from April 2026.

 

Teaching and assessment

The core and option courses are taught by lectures and seminars and assessed by essays, short written reports, research reports, oral presentations and posters.

Further information

You can see more details about the 2025/26 programme structure and courses on the Degree Programme Table for the MSc in Archaeology. We expect the 2026/27 programme structure to be available from May 2026.

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