The Director’s view, 2025

The fascinating inertia of tradition

The word ‘traditional’ has come to be seen as pejorative in academia, implying ‘backward’ or at the very least ‘old-fashioned’. And yet, humanity as a whole, from both a social historic and an archaeological perspective, seems to abhor change. Pottery traditions last hundreds of years – tens of generations – with remarkable continuities in décor patterns and technical style. Politics, though often considered revolutionary, appeals to tradition for its legitimation and can be resistant to change; viz. the recent ‘Cracker Barrel’ brand and internal design change controversy in the United States. This appeal to maintaining the status quo of an ‘old-fashioned’ food chain stretched across the social spectrum: it was operationalised by politicians and played out in the mainstream media. Indeed, where would McDonald’s be without the ‘Golden Arches’, today a global trigger of expectations? Meanwhile, at an evolutionary scale, we can offer the ultimate survivor of lithic tradition: the handaxe. A type of core tool that we now know to have endured, with variations, from roughly 1.6 million to 50,000 years ago. Put simply, we always ask why things change. But isn’t the more interesting question, why do things stay the same?

Some years ago, Timothy Pauketat (2001, 4) wrote an interesting thought-piece on the archaeology of traditions, arguing both that ‘history and tradition are closely intertwined’, and that social history is ‘the practicing and embodying of traditions on a daily basis’. At first glance this seems like a more active normativism, but it is a matrix of social constraints, a restricted palette, whereby actors riff on the past like some musical theme, having forgotten or never knowing the emotional or symbolic connections of the original. Thus, tradition is in this depiction a continual renegotiation with the past and its meanings, with only an outward semblance of stasis. Red-slipped carinated wares (Middle Niger c.ad 500–900), for example, might persist for 400 years, but the process that creates them, and what they ‘mean’, may progressively become part of a self-enforced nostalgia, comfort items, like comfort foods – ‘just like grandma’s’.

To this end, for understanding the endurance of tradition I would like to invoke the innate human desire for stasis: predictable houses, consistent tools, choreographed spaces of worship. Social forces may lead to revolution and throw all the pieces of routine up into the air, but in the end the French Revolution re-embraces a nobility, and Russia recreates different kinds of tsar. We are all, always, looking for the new normal. Speaking as an amateur musical historian, the violin bow was a relatively samey pike-shaped implement from the 1500s until around 1750, when it underwent a dramatic period of adaptive radiation due to new technology, new materials and new musical demands. After 40 years of profound diversification, the violin bow settled back into a singular form that continues once again to be used to this day. Humanity can only abide disturbance of their routines for so long. This is an ‘X factor’ that must somehow be taken into account when looking at material stability. We must work towards a better understanding of the forces behind cultural inertia.

That said, we are still in a ‘revolutionary’ period at the Institute of Archaeology (IoA) and our field and other research programmes are continuing to display a new diversity.

The year that was: field schools, new students and Archaeology South-East

From just one major Institute field school a few years ago, we have had six over this past year. The big one, with nearly 100 participants, was at Alpheton (Suffolk), with Stuart Brookes at the helm unearthing some interesting structures. This is another Roman villa site, which is part of a long commitment between the Institute and Suffolk County Council’s archaeology team. Digging for Britain visited Alpheton this year and grabbed Murray Andrews for the Big Tent – so we’ll be looking out for that on the television.

Meanwhile, I remained at Norton (Suffolk), trying to demonstrate that what has been found there really is not a Roman villa, but more of an imperial logistics centre. I spent the better part of four weeks leading a group of tireless mattockers, digging a section through the 12-metre-wide ditch that surrounds the hill on which the parish church of St Andrew’s now stands (Figure 1). Evidence is now suggesting that it was initially a Roman fortification, but an Anglo-Saxon feature is not yet ruled out. The other focus of fieldwork at Norton involved the excavation of a field of iron working activity and several ‘industrial’ disposal pits, one with an amphora neck emplaced at the base – ritual or whimsy (Figure 2)?

Figure 1

The Director in the church hill ditch, Norton, August 2025 (Source: Ewa Szteinduchert)

Figure 2

Iron forge disposal pit in Trench 13, Norton, August 2025, with students Berkan Oram and Sammi Ng (Source: Kevin C. MacDonald)

In London, our May in-town excavation was again at Greenwich Park, exploring the landscape around the Roman Temple with Andrew Mayfield, Community Archaeologist, the Royal Parks. In Sussex, Louise Rayner and Andy Gardner were back training upper-level students around the Roman mansio at Alfodene. And at Bodiam Castle, the Institute was partnering with the National Trust to investigate Roman and medieval remains. Finally, Murray Andrews has kicked off an important new early medieval project in the Midlands at Hanbury. We understand this will be expanded in the coming year, so watch this space …

Our annual September Archaeotech at Butser Ancient Farm (Hampshire) was the biggest ever this year – led by Matt Pope and his outstanding team. It is always a pleasure to visit!

IoA student numbers have continued to grow, especially at the undergraduate level. The academic year 2024/25 saw 112 new undergraduates, 235 new master’s students and 14 new research students from 26 different locations. Thus, we will continue to develop new field (and post-excavation) opportunities.¹

Last, but certainly not least, Archaeology South-East (ASE) completed its 50th anniversary celebrations with a conference held in April in Sussex that explored ASE’s legacy and growth while also looking towards its future.²

Promotions, new staff and leavers

I am pleased to announce the success of Stuart Brookes, Gabriel Moshenska and Corinna Riva in UCL’s Senior Academic, Research and Teaching Promotions. Stuart has been promoted to Associate Professor in Medieval Archaeology, Gabriel to Professor of Public Archaeology and Corinna to Professor of Central Mediterranean Archaeology.³

This year we welcomed a number of new academic, research and professional support colleagues and also said goodbye to those whose posts with us had come to an end or who wished to explore new avenues. In this context, I particularly want to note the dedication and commitment of long-standing staff Sandra Bond and Gail Hammond. They will be much missed, and we wish them all the best for the future.

Our new colleagues include:

• Verónica Vázquez López – Lecturer in Mesoamerican Archaeology.

• Delphine Fremondeau – Biomolecular Archaeology Technician.

• Stefania Alfarano – Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Late Antique Archaeology covering for Corisande Fenwick’s research leave.

• Carlotta Farci – Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Archaeological Science covering for Miljana Radivojevic’s research leave.

We also welcome new post-doctoral colleagues, including:

• Clara Boulanger – British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow undertaking her project Following the Fish: Using Ichthyoarchaeology to Study the Tempo and Geography of Human Dispersals Through Island Southeast Asia (see Boulanger 2025 in this volume).

• Ilaria Calgaro (Research Assistant), Rebecca Roberts (Research Fellow) and Chris Stevens (Research Fellow) on the European Research Council (ERC) (UK Research and Innovation [UKRI] funding guarantee) DREAM project led by Miljana Radivojevic.

• Daniel James – Research Fellow in Stable Isotope Palaeoecology and Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction on the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)-funded PALAEOTHAW project led by Rhiannon Stevens.

• Yunxiao Liu and Katya Turchin – Research Assistants on the Arcadia-funded Central Asian Archaeological Landscapes (CAAL) project led by Tim Williams and Gai Jorayev.

• Veronica Occari – Research Fellow in Ceramic and Glaze Analysis in North Africa.

• Ruth Pelling – Senior Research Fellow on the ERC-funded EVERYDAYISLAM project led by Corisande Fenwick.

We also welcome new colleagues to our restructured professional support staff team, including Caroline Coleman (Estates Operations Coordinator) and James Pang (Institute Manager), as well as grant-funded professional support staff, including Davit (Dato) Naskidashvili (Geomatics and Graphics Archaeological Technician working on Corisande Fenwick’s ERC-funded EVERYDAYISLAM project), Ayelen Delgado Orellana and Laura Wasowska (Technicians in Archaeobotany and Osteology, respectively) on the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) project.

We said goodbye this year to the following research colleagues: Saltanat Amirova, Nadia Bartolini, Tessa Campbell, Giacomo Fontana, Jan Kolar, Henry McGhie and Robert Staniuk.

The passing parade: recognition and awards

IoA staff, honorary associates, students and alumni, both individually and for specific projects, continue to be recognised through an impressive array of awards and esteem indicators, including significant media interest, leadership of national and international panels and publication awards.

First, an ‘all staff award’. I am pleased to announce that the IoA has again been ranked third in the world in the QS World University Rankings by Subject for 2025. We continue to maintain an unparalleled range of expertise, research and outreach activities.⁴

IoA and ASE staff, including our postgraduate teaching assistants, continue to be recognised for their outstanding contributions to the learning experience and success of our students, being nominated in the 2025 UCL Student Choice Awards. Congratulations especially to Claudia Naeser, Corinna Riva and Katie Hemer who were shortlisted for a UCL Provost’s Education Award for improving the student experience, infrastructure or processes that enhance teaching and learning. Alice Stevenson was also nominated for the Eugenics Legacy Project Education Award, for adapting our education so that it continues to support graduates to develop the knowledge and skills required to become the leaders of tomorrow who can change the world for the better. Faculty Education Award winners included Paul Wordsworth (in the category ‘Assessment for Learning’), Bill Sillar (in the category ‘Assessment for Learning’), Stuart Brookes (in the category ‘Skills Development’) and Matt Pope (in the category ‘Fostering Belonging’).⁵

I am also pleased to announce the renewal of professional accreditation for all our undergraduate degrees from the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) and Universities Archaeology UK (UAUK) for the next five years. The UCL Institute of Archaeology was one of seven universities to be included in the first cohort of archaeology departments to be awarded CIfA accreditation and we are happy that our support and care of our students have again been recognised.⁶

This year we announced a new endowed fund, the Tessa Verney Wheeler Memorial Award, which will provide awards for IoA master’s students to gain training in field archaeology. The award is named in honour of Tessa Verney Wheeler (1893–1936), the South African-born British archaeologist, who founded the Institute of Archaeology in 1934 with her husband Sir Mortimer Wheeler, and which opened its doors in 1937.⁷

The Community Archaeology Geophysics Group (which grew out of the work of an AHRC-funded project led by Kris Lockyear) was presented with the prestigious Britannia Award by the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies for their survey work at the Roman cities of Verulamium and Durobrivae more particularly.⁸

Sara Perry has been appointed to the REF2029 Research Diversity Advisory Panel (RDAP), which will develop strategies to support the equitable recognition of diverse forms of research within the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029 development, delivery and assessment.⁹

Matt Pope was awarded the Henry Stopes Memorial Medal for 2024 from the Geologists’ Association. The medal, first awarded in 1947, is given in recognition of individual contributions to research into early prehistory and the geological context of human origins. Previous awardees have included Mary Leakey, Kenneth Oakley and UCL Honorary Professor Chris Stringer.¹⁰

David Wengrow was awarded the Wenjin Book Award (one of China’s most prestigious literature awards) for 2025 for his international best-seller The Dawn of Everything.¹¹

A collaborative article co-authored by Andrea Martínez-Carrasco, Patrick Quinn and Bill Sillar, with colleagues from Germany and Chile, was awarded the Charles C. Kolb Award for Archaeological Ceramics for 2024.¹²

Student and alumni news

ASE continue to document the experiences of our BA Archaeology with placement-year students. A record five students joined ASE in October, as part of their BA Archaeology with placement-year degree.¹³

Several IoA undergraduate and graduate diploma students were awarded Departmental prizes for the 2024–5 academic session both in specialist subject areas and for their outstanding contributions to the life and work of the Institute. Congratulations to them all!¹⁴ Our master’s students were also awarded departmental and faculty prizes for the 2023–4 academic session. Congratulations again!¹⁵

The First Symposium on Mad Studies in Archaeology & Heritage, organised by IoA research students took place in June.¹⁶

Major funding for new research

The Institute of Archaeology led the UCL bid for UKRI funding from the AHRC’s RICHeS programme. This award for the project Advancing Access to the UCL Archaeological Reference (A3RC) will support us in enhancing access to and improving infrastructure for our globally significant scientific reference collections.¹⁷

Manuel Arroyo-Kalin has been awarded UKRI funding for his collaborative research (with Birkbeck, Kew Gardens and the University of Nottingham) on Voices of Indigenous Amazonia: Historical Processes of Sociobiodiversity in the Face of the Challenges of the Anthropocene.

Andrew Bevan has been awarded a major research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for research on Deep Traditions of European Food-Keeping. This fellowship will allow Andrew to bring to completion a substantial book project that explores a central human challenge – how to keep food beyond its natural shelf life, in a way that ensures year-long provisions, protection against pests, droughts or wars, and opportunities for trade.¹⁸

Katie Hemer has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, to start in September 2025, for research on Living and Dying in Early Medieval Wales: A Bioarchaeological Perspective. Drawing on a decade of excavation and research into the largest excavated rural cemetery in Wales (St Patrick’s Chapel, Pembrokeshire), this study will synthesise, analyse and interpret a corpus of bioarchaeological data from St Patrick’s Chapel and other early medieval cemetery populations to create an original narrative that explores the everyday experiences of those who lived and died in Wales between the sixth and eleventh centuries ad.

We are also delighted to host two new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellows for two years from autumn 2025. Geneviève Godin (supervised by Rodney Harrison) will undertake research on Sewer Ecologies: The Hidden Heritage of London’s Urban Infrastructure, while Flora Andreozzi (supervised by Dorian Fuller) will undertake research on Ancient Egyptian Floral Arrangements: A Modern Analytical Key for the Identification of their Plant Species and the Study of their Operational Chain.

Johanna Zetterstrom Sharp (together with Haidy Geismar, UCL Anthropology) has been awarded Leverhulme Trust funding for the research project Collections, Conviviality, Culture Wars: UK Postcolonial Redress, 1997–Present, which is due to begin in October. This project takes as its starting point the lack of a formal UK national position on restitution and ownership of colonial era collections. Through archival, historical, ethnographic and policy research the project team will develop an integrated picture of the interrelationship of policy and museum practices that have emerged since the Labour victory in the 1997 general election. They seek to understand the relationship between new museological practices, self-defined ethics and public and political trust in cultural organisations.

Finally, the UCL Institute of Archaeology is now a formal partner with the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service in the project Romans Unearthed: Suffolk’s Hidden Villas, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.¹⁹

Media and public engagement

Some exciting articles or media appearances from this year include: Mammoth, a project to catalogue Ice Age animal bones that begins in Jersey. Archaeologists from Archaeology South-East and the UCL Institute of Archaeology have been helping Jersey Heritage to catalogue and carefully store hundreds of pieces of Ice Age animal bone, which has garnered media interest.²⁰ At the end of each short paragraph below there is a footnote with the web coordinates for each original article described.

Unearthing a Roman crime scene – Murray Andrews appeared on BBC’s Digging for Britain to discuss an important new find of Roman counterfeit coin moulds.²¹

The site of a Roman Villa at Norton, Suffolk, which was the focus of the UCL Institute of Archaeology’s summer field schools in 2023 and 2024, led by me with IoA and ASE colleagues, has yielded significant finds, including a horse burial that also featured on Digging for Britain.²²

I also wrote and co-curated an exhibition, ‘Creole Origins: Cane River Diasporas, 1770–1830’, with Paige Brevick (IoA alumna) and Rebecca Blankenbaker (Cane River National Heritage Area), which opened in November in Louisiana, USA, and marked the culmination of more than 20 years of archaeological research by the collaborative Cane River African Diaspora Archaeological Project, involving the UCL Institute of Archaeology, in co-operation with the American archaeologist David W. Morgan (US NPS).²³

I was also interviewed in March for an episode of The Ancients podcast series on the Nok Culture of prehistoric Nigeria, discussing the questions: who were they? Where did they live? And what can their incredible artistry tell us about Iron Age West Africa?²⁴

Sada Mire was invited to headline and launch this year’s Somali Week Festival at the British Library. The Somali Week Festival has run for three decades in London. For the 2024 event, Sada Mire took part in the in-conversation style event Creative Worlds and the Environment.²⁵

Mike Parker Pearson and I featured in the new Meet the Fellows series of interviews by the Society of Antiquaries of London.²⁶

Matt Pope and his team’s exploration of the Violet Bank, an intertidal reef off the coast of Jersey, looking for the remains of Neanderthals and their tools from 60,000 years ago, also featured on Digging for Britain.²⁷

ASE archaeologists and community partners have been investigating the histories of Black Londoners in the Whitechapel area, uncovering buried stories at London’s earliest playhouse and taverns, which featured in the July/August edition of British Archaeology.²⁸

Even Neanderthals had distinct preferences when it came to making dinner, study suggests. Matt Pope was invited to comment on a study into this prehistoric population, calling it ‘a powerful reminder that there is no monolithic neanderthal culture’.²⁹

One of Stonehenge’s biggest mysteries has been ‘solved’ after 5,000 years. Mike Parker Pearson said the formation is different from the other 900 stone rings in Britain and it ‘suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose’.³⁰

Human sacrifices found in a Bronze Age tomb in Turkey were mostly teenage girls. David Wengrow suggests that the idea that humans evolved to live in just one form of society almost all the time is almost certainly wrong, when discussing the flexibility in social structures during the early Bronze Age.³¹

A prehistoric bone tool ‘factory’ hints at the early development of abstract reasoning in human ancestors. Renata Peters was involved in a new study looking at the oldest collection of mass-produced prehistoric bone tools which revealed that human ancestors were likely capable of more advanced abstract reasoning one million years earlier than thought.³²

Are ultra-processed foods changing the shape of our jaws? Carolyn Rando discussed the changing shape of jaws resulting in an increased rate of crooked teeth in the modern era as we transitioned to an industrialised diet.³³

An unusual hoard of Roman coins found during building work. Murray Andrews was interviewed about one of the largest ever coin hoards dating to the Roman Conquest of Britain, which was recently found during building work in west Worcestershire.³⁴

In a Newsweek article, archaeologists reveal their favourite finds of 2024; Elizabeth Graham nominated the discovery of huge hearths that processed salt on an industrial scale as her favourite archaeological find of 2024.³⁵

A vast three-mile, £300 million bridge is one of UK’s longest, with secrets buried beneath. Andrew Reynolds explained in the Express that the ruins of a chapel on St Twrogg’s Island likely dates from the thirteenth century in an early Gothic style.³⁶

Selected Institute public events

As part of our commitment to provide an outstanding research environment for staff, students and visitors, the IoA hosts and organises numerous events on many different aspects of archaeology and is linked to other heritage institutions, archaeological societies and organisations.

The Institute was again co-organiser of Current Archaeology Live! 2025, including the UK Archaeology Awards, which took place on 1 March. Included in this year’s nominations was Honorary Senior Research Fellow Rob Ixer, whose collaborative research on Seeking a Scottish Source: Updating the Story of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone was nominated for Research Project of the Year.³⁷

Current Archaeology Live! brings together hundreds of archaeological enthusiasts with a range of entertaining presenters and a room of book dealers, tour and field school organisers and educators. We will also co-organise the 2026 event – details will be announced nearer the time!³⁸

The Gordon Childe Lecture and Seminar 2025, which took place in May, was given by Professor Liv Nilsson Stutz from Linnaeus University, Sweden, with a lecture titled Piecing Together Past Human Encounters with Death: A Theory and Practice of the Archaeology of Death (see Nilsson Stutz 2025 in this volume). The annual Gordon Childe Lecture features speakers able to take a broad view of their topic and make it interesting and relevant to both the general public and subject specialists. The accompanying seminar offered an opportunity for extended discussion on the themes raised in the lecture.³⁹

The IoA Research Seminars that took place in terms 1 and 2 featured research presentations from our colleagues and external partners on topics associated with the following over-arching and emerging themes: human planetary transformations; life histories; material worlds; power and difference.

The International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA) continued their series of China Night research seminars on topics such as Textile Archaeology in China; New Ways of Making Intangible Cultural Heritage in Contemporary China; The British Museum Exhibition ‘Silk Roads’: A Spotlight on Tang-dynasty China; History, Memory and Heritage Value in Tianjin as a River City; Behind the Scenes of A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang; and concluded with their annual lecture given by Francesca Bray (Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh) in March on Internal Colonialisms: The Three-age System, Chinese Genealogies of Civilisation and the Challenge of the Jade Age.⁴⁰

The annual Sir David Wilson Lecture, the keynote event in the 2024–5 IoA/British Museum Medieval Seminar Series, was given by Professor Neil Price (University of Uppsala, Sweden) in October, titled Viking Ages, Norse Worlds, Interdisciplinary Challenges. Other seminars included presentations on Mother Oak: Medieval Transhumance in South-East England a Dependency on Lowland Wood-Pasture; All that Glistens? The Role(s) of Gold Coinage in Northern Europe, c.1250–1550; Excavations at Rendlesham, Suffolk, 2021–2023: Investigating an Early Medieval Royal Settlement; Sogdian Silks? On the Representation of Textiles in Sogdian Wall Paintings; and concluding with a panel discussion on Material Matters: Models of Trade and Exchange Between East and West in the Early Middle Ages’.⁴¹

Michael Frachetti (Professor of Archaeology, Washington University in St Louis, USA) gave two special lectures at the IoA in November titled Early Medieval Urbanism, Economy and Political Identity in Highland Central Asia; and The Open Ecumene: Economic, Ideological and Demographic Choices among Bronze Age Eurasians.⁴²

The Institute for Archaeometallurgical Studies (IAMS) Beno Rothenberg Memorial Lecture 2025 was given by Thomas Oliver Pryce (CNRS, France) in March titled The Hunt for Ancient Metalworkers and the Prehistory of the Sub-Himalayan Silk Road.⁴³

The AHRC-funded Transforming Data Reuse in Archaeology (TETRARCHS) project, led by Sara Perry, ran their series of online seminars, open to all, on the subject of What Can Data Do for Us?⁴⁴

Conferences and symposia

Corisande Fenwick has been awarded funding from the Barakat Trust to support the organisation of a conference at UCL in May 2026 titled Zīrid Ifrīqiya and the Islamic World in the Tenth–Twelfth Centuries. The event will be co-organised with colleagues at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a call for papers has been announced with a deadline of 30 September for submissions.⁴⁵

The Islamic Archaeology Research Network, led by Corisande, co-organised the Ninth annual Islamic Archaeology Day, with colleagues in SOAS, in February. This continues to be the main event for Islamic archaeologists in the UK and beyond.⁴⁶

The South American Seminar: London, organised by Bill Sillar and colleagues, was held in November and May and is a significant event in the yearly calendar for the subject area.⁴⁷

As part of the continuing collaborative relationship between the UCL Institute of Archaeology and the University of Toronto’s Mediterranean Archaeology Doctoral Cluster, a bilateral UCL–University of Toronto conference on the topic of Nomads, Pastoralists, Migrants, Refugees: Investigating the Impact of Mobile Populations was organised, primarily for PhD students and early career researchers.⁴⁸

A workshop on Cereal Cultures: Exploring Past and Present Social and Economic Systems of Millet and Cereal Cultivation in India and Beyond, co-hosted by UCL (Dorian Fuller) with the University of Groningen, the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt and Kew Gardens, was held in May.⁴⁹

Cycles of Theory: A Critical Review of 60 Years of Archaeological Theory and Practice, a two-day, in-person, special event to mark the lifetime achievement award of the Royal Anthropological Institute to Professor Ian Hodder, was held at the IoA in June.⁵⁰

Conclusion

As I bring this year’s Director’s View to a close, we are currently going through painful transitions in many British universities, including the reorganisation of both administrative systems and departments, changes that are very much with us here at the Institute. It is therefore apparent to us how uncertain and unsettling change in ‘ways of doing’ can be. The challenge will be finding the next phase of stability.