Edinburgh Archaeology

20/07/2026

⚠️ Experimental Archaeology in Progress! ⚠️ 🦴 🔨🪨 during the summer our MSc students are busy with their dissertation research 🔬 Kemian Liu has been busy in the labs doing experiments to recreate prehistoric bone tools called retouchers 🍖 ⚒️ these are most commonly associated with the Palaeolithic for both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Kemian had been recording his experiments so he had a full record of the experiment and then will be 3D scanning the tools to analyze in GIS 🌍 💻

HCA at Edinburgh

14/07/2026

🏺🪏 Dr Guillaume Robin recently completed another excavation season at Punta Ferulosu (Bonorva, Sardinia), with students from Edinburgh Archaeology HCA at Edinburgh and colleagues from Inrap . We worked on a Middle Bronze Age cluster of domestic buildings, incl. a “megaron” (monumental structure with porched entrance)!
Edinburgh University Archaeology Society

03/06/2026

That's a wrap! Another year's training mock excavation for our MSc Human Osteoarchaeology students is complete! ☠️ (NB all skeletons are plastic casts). Thanks to Easter Bush Estates for hosting us!

24/03/2026

🌦️ This week’s ArchSoc/Archaeology Research Seminar will be given by Dr Barry Molloy (UCD):

“Did climate change cause Bronze Age societies to collapse ca. 1200 BC? A critical perspective from Central Europe”

📅 Thursday 26th March

🕰️ 16:15pm

📍 Meadows Lecture Theatre (G.07), Doorway 4, Old Medical School (Doorway 4).

The event is FREE and open to all!

📷 Courtesy of Barry Molloy.

School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh, School of GeoSciences

18/03/2026

🌾 🪴🏰 This week's Archaeology Research Seminar will be given by Dr Alice Wolff, our current IASH-HCA fellow.

"Agriculture & Environment at Bamburgh Castle"

🕰️ 16:15
📅 Thursday 19th March 2026
📍 Meadows Lecture Theatre (G.07), Doorway 4, Old Medical School (Doorway 4)

The seminar is free and open to all!



📷 Credit: Alice Wolff

School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh University Archaeology Society - Archsoc
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities - University of Edinburgh

08/03/2026

Fun fact about us for - our first graduating students were both women!

🥇Dr Margaret Crichton Mitchell MBE (later Stewart), won the first ever class medal in Archaeology at The University of Edinburgh, achieved her MA in 1930, and then her PhD in 1934 (she was Vere Gordon Childe's only PhD student).

🪨 And Barbara Laidler was our first ever BSc Archaeology (c. 1930s) see her in the photos washing a standing stone at Avebury.

School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh University Archaeology Society - Archsoc

06/03/2026

Interested to hear more about the recent paper by Dr Linda Fibiger et al. on the prehistoric mass grave in Serbia? Then check out Linda and Barry Molloy's write up about it in The Conversation UK

🔗 https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.gc6gc3n9k



School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh

Our study has finally uncovered the circumstances surrounding the death of 77 people, mostly women and girls.

05/03/2026

🛢️ Using Contemporary Archaeology to understand Scotland’s hydrocarbon heritage

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Dr Jonathan Gardner’s ongoing research into Scotland’s hydrocarbon heritage features in a new contemporary archaeology-themed issue of Archaeology Scotland Magazine (Winter 25/26).

🏺 Jonathan’s research discusses how archaeology can be used to understand our historic and continued reliance on fossil fuels in Scotland using the example of its ‘first’ oil industry which operated in West Lothian between 1851 and 1962.

🔗 The accepted version of the article is available via Research Gate here: https://tinyurl.com/mrvp3dcd

☢️ And the full chapter on which it was based was published previously in Toxic Heritage (2024).

04/03/2026

This week's joint Edinburgh University Archaeology Society - Archsoc Archaeology Research Seminar will be by Emeritus Professor Ian Ralston, former Abercromby Professor of Archaeology (School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh)

"Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University until about 1990: Robert Munro, John Abercromby, Gordon Childe, Stuart Piggott and others. Some highways and byways in the development of a Department"

This is an exciting preview into our department's history ahead of our 100th Year as a Department in 2027! 💯 🎂

📅 Thursday 5th March 2026

🕰️ 16:15pm

📍Meadows Lecture Theatre, University of Edinburgh

This event FREE and all are welcome! No booking necessary.

🔗 https://hca.ed.ac.uk/news-events/events/research-seminars/archaeology-seminars

Abstract:

2027 will mark the centenary of Gordon Childe’s appointment to the Abercromby Chair. The development of Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh will be traced until c. 1990, when it was still very much in the mould created by the pioneers early in the century. After this date – for a variety of reasons from the massive expansion and internationalization of tertiary education to the import of the polluter pays model into field archaeology – many aspects of teaching and research were to evolve considerably as universities themselves changed managerially and otherwise. This constitutes a rather separate story, best treated by others.
The speaker is compiling an account of the growth of the department over this span for delivery later in 2026 and is keen that sins, whether of omission or commission, should be pointed out to him while there is still time for them to be rectified.

📷 Credits in Alt Text: Public Domain, Fair Use and CC BY-SA 4.0.

27/02/2026

‼️ Published Open Access ‼️ by joint first authors our own Dr Linda Fibiger and Dr Miren Iraeta-Orbegozo ( Københavns Universitet - University of Copenhagen /UCD School of Archaeology) in Nature Human Behaviour:

"A large mass grave from the Early Iron Age indicates selective violence towards women and children in the Carpathian Basin"

This study provides new evidence that the people buried together around 2800 years ago in Gomolava in the Southwest Carpathian Basin, experienced violent deaths, including bludgeoning and stabbing.

Unexpectedly, the genetic analysis revealed very few victims were related to each other. Isotopic analysis of their bones suggests they grew up in different settlements entirely.

In contrast to other mass graves of the time period, the site showed evidence of investment of time and resources in its preparation, experts say.

Read the article in full for FREE here:🔗 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02399-9

This work was funded as part of the European Research Council
funded project “The Fall of 1200 BC” led by Barry Molloy (UCD)
and involved an interdisciplinary team from institutions across Europe including the Museum of Vojvodina, The University of Edinburgh, Københavns Universitet - University of Copenhagen, UCD School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Universiteit Leiden / Leiden University, University of Kiel, University of Nottingham and others.

In this analysis of biomolecular and archaeological data from a ninth-century BCE mass grave in the Carpathian Basin, Fibiger et al. find evidence for the targeted killing of mostly unrelated women and children, challenging views of prehistoric violence.