2021 Conference - Bronze Age Britain
A Series of Online Lectures
February to June 2021
You've missed the lectures but some of them can be seen on NVAT's YouTube Channel
A big thank you to all our speakers and the hundreds of people who participated - and made generous donations to the work of the Trust
Migration, Ritual and Everyday Life
The NVAT 2021 Conference goes virtual for the first time and will this year take the form of five separate lectures.
We will explore our fast developing knowledge of Bronze Age Britain. There will be reference to the remarkable Bronze Age archaeology of the Nene valley but our themes and topics are of national significance.
The talks are free to attend though you will need to register for each event by following the links below. We strongly encourage donations to NVAT. We are a charity dedicated to the archaeology of the Lower Nene. We rely entirely on donations and grants to fund our work. A donation of £5 or £10 per attendee per talk would be very valuable to our cause.
Alternative ways to donate are available on the "About Page"
Programme
Talk 1 - Sat 13th February, 15.00 - 16.15
Scene Changes: Research Themes in the Bronze Age of Eastern England
Chris Evans, Executive Director, Cambridge Archaeological Unit
Talk 1 registration opens from 16th January
Talk 2 - Sat 20th March, 15.00 - 16.15
Stonehenge: the last hurrah? Constructing monuments at the Neolithic - early Bronze Age transition
Susan Greaney, PhD Research Student, Cardiff University
Talk 2 registration opens from 5th February
Talk 3 - Sat 24th April, 15.00 - 16.15
Out of the River - Inventories of routine from the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement
Mark Knight, Senior Project Officer, Cambridge Archaeological Unit
Talk 3 registration opens from 13th March
Talk 4 - Sat 22nd May, 15.00 - 16.15
Migration and Mobility in Bronze and Iron Age Britain: ancient DNA, isotopes and archaeology
Ian Armit, Chair in Archaeology, University of York
Talk 4 registration opens from 17th April
Talk 5 - Sat 12th June, 15.00 - 16.15
101 things to do with a dead body in the Bronze Age
Joanna Brück, Professor of Archaeology, University College Dublin
Talk 5 registration opens from 14th May
Format
The lectures will be delivered live by Zoom. Attendee numbers are limited so please ensure you register as soon as possible.
Talks are expected to last about 45 minutes leaving time for questions and discussion afterwards.
Joining instructions and pass-codes will be issued a few days prior to the relevant talk.
Where possible recordings of the talks will be made available on our YouTube channel:
Why Attend?
The objective of the conference is to make our emerging understanding of the Bronze Age accessible to a wider audience. Excavation, better dating techniques and DNA analysis are all helping to build a clearer picture. The talks will appeal to anyone curious about our journey over the past 5,000 years.
Our speakers are experts in their fields but are capable of explaining the relevant research and science in ways that non specialist attendees can follow.
The Must Farm finds from near Peterborough will be of particular interest to our local audience but their interpretation, and the topics covered in our other talks, will help to throw light on this ancient world and will be relevant to anyone interested in Bronze Age Britain.
Speaker Profiles
Chris Evans FSA
Director of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit which he co-founded 1990. He has worked in British Archaeology at a senior level for more than twenty-five years. Chris has published widely, including the Haddenham Project volumes (with Ian Hodder) and Power and Island Communities: Excavations at the Wardy Hill Ringwork, Coveney, Ely, as well as work at Earith. He has, in addition, directed a number of overseas fieldwork projects (Nepal, China & Cape Verde), and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists. He has recently been elected as Fellow to the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social sciences.
Susan Greaney
Susan works for English Heritage as a Senior Properties Historian as well as undertaking her PhD part-time. She is an archaeologist with a specialism in British prehistory. Over the last 11 years Susan has been responsible for archaeological research and developing content of a wide variety of exhibitions and site presentation projects, including Stonehenge, Tintagel Castle and Chysauster ancient village. Her current research concerns the archaeology of power: understanding the emergence and development of Neolithic monument complexes in Britain and Ireland.
Mark Knight
Mark Knight of Cambridge Archaeological Unit is director of the excavation of a well-preserved Bronze Age settlement at Must Farm (near Peterborough), which won this year’s Rescue Project of the Year award. Knight specialises in prehistoric landscapes, Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery, and his research interests include exploring later prehistoric contexts of inhabitation and mobility, and comprehending the lives of people in southern Britain between 3800-800 BC. He was voted "Archaeologist of the Year" in 2017.
Prof Ian Armit
After helping establish the Centre for Field Archaeology (now CFA Archaeology Ltd) at the University of Edinburgh, Ian left to join Historic Scotland as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments. Returning to academia, he took up a Senior Lectureship at Queen’s University Belfast in 1999 before moving to the University of Bradford as Professor of Archaeology in 2006, and subsequently to the University Leicester in 2018. He took up his current post of Chair in Archaeology at the University of York in 2019. Ian’s research centres on the cultural archaeology of the European Later Bronze and Iron Ages, the role of conflict and violence in non-state societies, and the demographic and genetic prehistory of European populations. He has directed fieldwork projects in Scotland, France and Sicily and has also worked extensively in south-east Europe.
Joanna Brück
Her primary area of research is the archaeology of the British Bronze Age. She is particularly interested in the treatment of the human body and concepts of the self; depositional practices and what these reveal about the meanings and values ascribed to objects; and the relationship between space and society including domestic architecture and the changing organisation of landscape. She is Vice President of the Prehistoric Society, and is an editor of the journal Archaeological Dialogues. She also has research interests in historical archaeology, including Victorian and Edwardian public parks and the archaeology of the 1916 Rising in Ireland.
