University of York, Department of Archaeology

01/09/2026

We are really looking forward to hosting the Society for Medieval Archaeology conference together with the Centre for Medieval Studies here in York on the 19th of September. The theme of the conference is Heritage Science and will include presentations by a number of staff and students from our department on topics from medieval churches, pottery production and foodways in medieval Iberia!

Student tickets start from £20 and are on sale via Eventbrite
https://www.york.ac.uk/medieval-studies/about/events/2026/medieval-archaeology-symposium/

17/08/2026

Every week during our taught semesters, a specialist in digital archaeology or digital heritage gives a talk about their research in our Digital Lunch seminar series. The whole Digital Lunch video archive is now available on our Youtube page. Please take a look - and do join us live this coming semester if you are studying with us this year!

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

24/07/2026

Three projects involving staff at BioArCh have been awarded funding through the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) Access Fund. One of the projects is a collaboration with the The Yorkshire Museum that aims to confirm the species identification of a historic whale. You can read more via our news story linked below:

https://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/about/news/2026/york-scientists-funding-naburn-whale/

24/07/2026

A team from York (Steve Ashby, Jessica Hendy, and Sam Greeves) have been awarded an AHRC grant to investigate the dynamics of trade and travel across Viking Europe. They will be exploring the connections between towns and distant mountain outlands, and are looking for a PDRA to apply ZooMS analysis to bone/antler artefacts and manufacturing deposits.

The project "RANGIFER: reindeer antler and outland connectivity in Viking-Age Europe" aims to foster new understanding of Viking-Age communication and connectivity, using rapid, minimally-destructive techniques never previously applied at scale in medieval archaeology. It will apply biomolecular techniques - palaeoproteomics - to investigate how reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) antler - a material available only thousands of miles north of Viking-Age towns - came to be used in objects widely dispersed across the Viking world.

is set to begin in October 2026. Read more about the project and see the job advert via the link below:

https://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/about/news/2026/new-project-viking-connectivity-northern-europe/

23/07/2026

Our recent PhD graduate and incoming Humanities Research Centre Postdoctoral Fellow in Archaeology, Dr Lucy Moore, has been awarded a Silver Jubilee Award for outstanding contributions to open knowledge by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Lucy has been an advocate for open knowledge within and beyond the department for years and we're thrilled to see her recognised as one of the five most influential champions for open knowledge in the UK over the past 25 years! In 2024, she was featured in the Guardian for her efforts to create a Wikipedia page for a woman from every country of the world and has championed women's representation on the site through hundreds of new pages as well as editing of existing ones (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/05/uk-academics-wikipedia-project-raises-profile-of-women-around-the-world). Beyond Wikipedia itself, she is also an active contributor and editor to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. You can read more via our news story about the award below:

https://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/about/news/2026/outstanding-contributions-open-knowledge/

A recent graduate from the Department of Archaeology has been recognised as one of the UK’s most influential champions of open knowledge.

23/07/2026

Huge congratulations to all our students who graduated last weekend!

We are incredibly proud of each and every one of you and your accomplishments. You have worked really hard over the past few years and we're really excited to see what you go on to do next. We also want to make some special shoutouts to our dissertation prize nominees and award winners. Each year the department nominates a number of dissertations to external organisations that run prestigious dissertation prize competitions. This year's nominees are:

Adam Holmes to the Viking Society for Northern Research Margaret Orme Prize "In Search of the Viking Great Army: Stamford Bridge and Skirpenbeck"

Emily Godfrey to the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Undergraduate Dissertation Prize for "From captivity to creativity: the artistic expression of daily life among POWs at Eden Camp"

Madelaine Turner to the Jonathan Sime Award for "Small wins and wicked problems: an archaeological approach to marine pollution and community engagement at red acre beach"

Anna Dodson to the BABAO Don Brothwell Award for "A bioarchaeological investigation of partial footbinding and resistance to gendered bodily control in Ming-Qing China"

Abbie Scholefield to the Association for Environmental Archaeology John Evans Dissertation Prize for "Looking at what the cat dragged in, isotopic dietary analysis of domestic cats and wildcats from a well deposit at 12th century Kilton Castle"

Callum Munro to the Society for Medieval Archaeology UG Dissertation Award for "Buildings, religion and urbanism: an investigation into the monastic landscape of late medieval Norwich"

We also awarded two prizes in collaboration with our partners at the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and York Conservation Trust.

Eleanor Holt was awarded the Yorkshire Philosophical Society Charles Wellbeloved Award for the highest dissertation mark of the cohort on "Commodification and Colonial Legacies in Bermuda's Heritage and tourism narratives: Impacts on identity and social memory in a postcolonial context"

Percival Croucher was awarded the York Conservation Trust Annual Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation on a Yorkshire building or buildings with "'All the houses which surround and crowd upon the Minster-yard should be removed.'” A study into Petergate’s commercial streetscape, residents and architecture in the nineteenth century"

15/07/2026

Earlier this summer, staff and research students gathered to share their work during our annual research week.

There were awards, presentations and posters on research and lab spaces, coffee and lunch breaks and more - including results of our inaugural research photo competition, which we will share once the images have been formally unveiled in our new building!

All photos by our Research Culture Ambassador student interns Katie and Els📷

14/07/2026

Luke Snell, one of our PhD students, has been featured by BBC News for his work digitally surveying York Minster as part of a major conservation project.

Luke completed both the BA in Archaeology and the MSc in Digital Archaeology at York, graduating in 2021. He subsequently joined the York Minster Stoneyard as a digital surveyor alongside studying for a PhD with us, and is now leading work to create detailed 3D scans of the cathedral and its decorative stonework.

The multi-year project aims to create a comprehensive digital record of York Minster, including its medieval and Victorian grotesques. The scans will allow conservators to monitor changes to the building, understand how its features have weathered over time, and preserve an accurate record for future generations.

The work has become increasingly important as changing weather conditions affect the Minster’s historic stone. Wetter winters and hotter, drier summers can accelerate deterioration, making detailed digital documentation a valuable tool for long-term conservation.

Luke’s work demonstrates how archaeological knowledge and digital skills can lead to careers in heritage, surveying and historic building conservation. His digital recordings have also supported public engagement projects, including the Watchers of York sculpture trail, which featured enlarged versions of grotesques from the Minster.

Speaking to the BBC, Luke reflected on the privilege of working at one of Europe’s largest Gothic cathedrals and contributing to its long history of conservation. Read the full story on the BBC News website:

Wetter winters and hotter summers are causing challenges for the Minster's stonework.

10/07/2026

PhD Student Yannick Signer has published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, with supervisors Dr Gareth Perry and Aleksandra McClain. The article reconstructs how pottery was produced at Staxton, one of medieval Yorkshire’s most prolific pottery production sites.

The paper may be of interest to current and past students, as well as other medieval archaeologists and ceramic specialists. The study is also a great demonstration of the range of research questions that can be investigated with the equipment available in the department’s material culture facilities.

The study successfully reconstructed the entire pottery production process in detail and, among other things, confirmed that the primary forming technique used by the Staxton potters was wheel-coiling (constructing vessels from clay coils on a turntable) instead of wheel-throwing (i.e. using a potters’ wheel). This is particularly interesting as contemporary production sites near Staxton were all wheel-throwing, highlighting the variability of forming methods in post-Conquest Yorkshire. Read more in our news story that links through to the article:

https://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/about/news/2026/pottery-production-medieval-yorkshire/

The research is part of Yannick Signer’s PhD and the paper has been co-authored by Yannick’s supervisors, Aleksandra McClain and Gareth Perry. As such, the research is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/R012733/1) through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities.

09/07/2026

Congratulations to Dr Steve Ashby on the publication of his chapter in the volume 'Harvesting the Margins of the Viking World (Brepols).
https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503620183-1

Steve was invited to contribute to this largely Scandinavian-written volume, to consider the Viking-Age exploitation of animals in the Scandinavian mountains. It ties up his work (with Jessie Hendy and Sam Greeves in BioArCH) on the origins of hair combs found across early-medieval Europe with ongoing research on trapping, travel and trade in upland Scandinavia.

And stay tuned: there is much bigger news coming on that subject soon!

Ashby, S.P. 2026. Hunters and combmakers, mountains and markets. Problematising the Movement of Reindeer Antler in Viking-Age Norway, in K. Ilves & C. Hillerdal (ed.), 'Harvesting the Margins of the Viking World. Decentralising Economies in Late Iron Age Fenno-Scandinavia'. Archaeology of Northern Europe 6. Turnhout: Brepols, pp.145-161.