Reading Group

Archaeology at Sheffield has always been a place of lively dialogue, collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas. To that end, we run a monthly reading group every last Tuesday of the month, February to November, in which we cover diverse topics through the lens of archaeomaterials.

Previous sessions have included the potential offered by sensory approaches to materials; the nature of confirmation bias in archaeology; and the use of archaeological materials to political ends. Sessions typically last an hour, with two or three readings providing a springboard for discussion. A list of previous speakers and topics is available below.

If you would be interested in running a session, please do get in touch.

Upcoming and previous sessions

Here is a brief overview of some of the topics covered in the last few sessions. For the full list, please see here.



May 2021 onward: Cancelled: campaigning in support of saving the Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield


27th April 2021: Investigating What the Human Element Really is, and Testing that to Absolute Failure

Amy Eva-Nuttall

Papers have been chosen around the subject of the human element, human skill, and some examples of ceramics made by a robot. The session will question just what human skill is, and discuss to what point human skill has ceased and robot meaninglessness has taken over.


30th March 2021: Mind the Gap: Problems with Reconstructing Missing Data

Paul Jack

The papers this month highlight the ephemeral, or simply non-existent, archaeological remains underpinning reconstruction leaving us to 'fill in the gaps' but in doing so are we simply imbuing the end result with our preconceived ideas of what the past 'should' look like? How can we work around missing data and can we do it without injecting aspects of our modern cosmologies/ideologies? Can we identify when others have failed to appropriately navigate these waters? And just how much of a problem is it really?

  • Žižek, S. 2017. Knee-Deep in Ideology. Journal of Extreme Anthropology 1(1), 82-3.

  • Timberlake, S. 2007. The use of experimental archaeology/archaeometallurgy for the understanding and reconstruction of Early Bronze Age mining and smelting technologies. In Metals and mines: Studies in archaeometallurgy. ed. by. La Niece, S. London: Archetype Publications. 27-36.

  • McGrail, S. 2016. Experimental boat archaeology: Has it a future?. In Connected by the Sea: Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Denmark 2003. ed. by. Blue, L., Hocker, F. M. and Englert, A. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 8-15.


23rd February 2021: Emotional Attachment to Objects

Siân Evans

This month we are looking at two papers from 2018. Each of these articles examine human emotional bonds with objects. The first considers our own attachments to physical things and how this changes an object's value in different ways. The second looks at a contemporary assemblage of padlocks (“love-locks”) accumulating on a bridge and invites us to consider how these objects’ significance and purpose have changed and evolved. One object may undergo a number of such changes during its lifetime. We can think about our own attachments (as archaeologists) to ancient objects and even how our own belongings might be responded to, in the future.

  • Bell, T. and Spikins, P., 2018. The object of my affection: Attachment security and material culture. Time and Mind, 11(1), pp.23-39.

  • Houlbrook, C., 2018. Lessons from love-locks: The archaeology of the contemporary assemblage. Journal of Material Culture, 23(2), pp.214-238.


24th November 2020: The Death of Artefact Typology

Nicholas Groat

In reference to the application of theory, Bintliff proffers "Published papers increasingly begin with pages of scholastic citation to works of theory, followed by applications to archaeological data which rely more on repeated reference to favoured approach than providing convincing matching concepts to recovered material evidence." (Bintliff 2012, The Death of Archaeological Theory, p9). Repeatedly referenced typologies have similarly been a stalwart mode of analysis behind long-standing interpretations of the human past, and have acted as the impetus of many published works often without full critical evaluation. Is it time that we reconsider the limits, reliability, and ontological issues of artefact typologies in light of seminal turns in archaeological interpretation? The selected papers as our starting point have considered such an idea, but is this question even necessary at all considering the paucity of archaeological evidence to begin with?

  • Henry et. al. 2017. Against Typology: a Critical Approach to Archaeological Order. SAA Archaeological Record. 17(1), 28-32.

  • Jung, R. 2010. Classification, Counting and Publication of Aegean-Type Pottery Around the Mediterranean.

  • Lefrancq et al. 2019. A Typology of Practice: The Archaeological Ceramics From Mahurjhari. Internet Archaeology, 52.



27th October 2020: Does 'traditional craft practice' really exist through multiple generations? And what does that mean for our interpretations of the past?

Dr. Lenore Thompson

  • Gandon, E., Roux, V., 2019. Cost of motor skill adaptation to new craft traits: Experiments with expert potters facing unfamiliar vessel shapes and wheels. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 53: 229-239.

  • Elliott, B., 2019. Craft Theory in Prehistory: Case Studies from the Mesolithic of Britain and Ireland. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 85: 161-176.

  • Wolfe, U.I., 2019. Grasping at Threads: A Discussion on Archaeology and Craft. In: C. Burke, S.M. Spencer-Woods, eds., Crafting in the World, 51-73.


29th September 2020: How common is a Smith? Status and craft in people and material culture

Nicholas Clarke

The following papers offer two differing views on specialised metal crafting and status in Europe: one from Prehistoric Wessex and another from early medieval Siberia. Does the status of the smith lie in their tools, or in the embodied knowledge of how to use them? To what extent are smiths liminal figures, both desired and ostracised by the societies that use them?


25th August 2020: What time is it? Technology and chronology

Nicholas Clarke

Prior to the development of scientific dating techniques, archaeologists typically constructed chronologies for past societies based on changes in material culture. Even now, with the plethora of ‘absolute’ dating techniques at hand, chronologies based on material culture often serve as a shorthand for periods of societal and technological similarity: think of the connotations of the phrases ‘British Bronze Age’ or ‘transition from Clovis to Folsom points’, for example. Yet there is a danger that by giving chronology a forward momentum and associating social change with technological change, the past is presented as a linear journey to the modern era, in which technology gets ‘better’ as time goes on. Does this mean that such chronologies should be abandoned altogether? Do such broad chronological categories, especially in prehistory, shape how we think about continuity and change?

  • Chapter 1: Chronology (pp.1-32) from Lucas, G. 2005. The Archaeology of Time. Abingdon: Routledge

  • Overholtzer, L. 2014. Agency, practice, and chronological context: A Bayesian approach to household chronologies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 37, pp. 37-47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2014.11.001

  • Pfaffenberger, B. 1992. The social anthropology of technology. Annual Review of Anthropology 21, pp. 491-516. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002423


28th July 2020: Materialising politics: exploiting material culture and the past... today

Nicholas Groat

  • Brophy. 2019. The Moggalithic antiquarian: party political broadcasts from stone circles. Available at: https://almostarchaeology.com/post/189644783963/moggalithic

  • Campfens and Tarsis. 2017. Crimean gold in the crosshairs of geopolitics.

  • Trigger. 1984. Archaeologies: Nationalist, colonialist, imperialist.


30th June 2020: Heritage, craft, and experiment: why bother?

Siân Evans

  • Wilson. 2014. Bell founding and performance metal casting.

  • Budd and Taylor. 1995. Magic vs. science in the interpretation of prehistoric metal-working


26th May 2020: Bellows and bagpipes: wind power in prehistory

Amy-Eva Nutall

  • Pryce et al. 2007. ‘De Caerimoniae’ technological choices in copper-smelting furnace design at Early Bronze Age Chrysokamino, Crete. Archaeometry 49.3, 543-557

  • Betancourt and Muhly. 2006. The pot bellows. Hesperia Supplements. 36. 125-132

  • Ruidiaz. 2006. The bagpipe, its origin and evolution (unpublished document)


28th April 2020: Fill in the blanks: archaeological representation and technological processes

Nicholas Groat

  • Hurcombe. 2008. Organics from Inorganics: Using Experimental Archaeology as a Research Tool for Studying Perishable Material Culture. World Archaeology. 40(1), 83-115.

  • Dobres. 1999. Technology's Links and Chaines. The processual unfolding of technique and technician.


25th February 2020: What do we think that we are studying?

Prof. John C. Barrett

  • Binford, L. 1962 'Archaeology as Anthropology' American Antiquity, 28(2), 217-225

  • Witmore, C. 2014 'Archaeology and the New Materialisms' Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 1(2), 204-246 (and comments)


26th November 2019: Who, or what, makes a good pot? Finding skill in the archaeological record

Nicholas Clarke

    • Ingold, T. 2000. Of string bags and bird's nests: skill and the construction of artefacts.

    • Sofaer, J. and S. Budden, 2012. Many hands make light work: potting and embodied knowledge at the Bronze Age tell in Százhalombatta, Hungary.


29th October 2019: Confirmation bias (or how to embrace getting things wrong)

Siân Evans

  • Gregg et al 2017. The SPOT effect: People Spontaneously Prefer Their Own Theories

  • Nakhaeizadeh et al. 2014. Cognitive Bias in Forensic Anthropology: Visual Assessment of Skeletal Remains is Susceptible to Confirmation Bias


24th September 2019: Archaeological science – the good and the bad

Matthew J. Lester

  • Killick. 2015. The Awkward Adolescence of Archaeological Science

  • Martinón-Torres and Killick. 2015. Archaeological Theories and Archaeological Science


27th August 2019: How are assemblages formed? How do you group artefacts into an assemblage? What is the relevance of categories such as material, style, etc? How do museums deal with non-contextual material?

Lamia Sassine

  • Feldman. 2018. Style as a Fragment of the Ancient World

  • Voss. 2012. Curation as Research. A Case Study in Orphaned and Underreported Archaeological Collections

  • Adams. 1988. Archaeological Classification: Theory Versus Practice


30th July 2019: Sensory Archaeology: How can we define sensory archaeology? How does it relate to the materiality of spaces and objects? How accessible is sense in the past? How can sensory archaeology enhance our understanding of past people?

Cait Scott

  • Day. 2013. Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology

  • Woolgar. 2016. The medieval senses were transmitters as well as receivers

  • Duggan. 2018. London Smellwalk Around 1450: Smelling Medieval Cities


25th June 2019: What makes a “material”, what makes an “assemblage”, and what is the difference???

Nicholas Groat

  • Ingold, 2007. Materials Against Materiality

  • Hamilakis and Jones, 2017. Archaeology and Assemblage


29th May 2019: Artefact biographies, and the ways in which we approach the interpretation of our material culture data

Dr. Lenore Thompson

  • Gosden and Marshall, 1999. The Cultural Biography of Objects

  • Burström, 2014. Things in the Eye of the Beholder: A Humanistic Perspective on Archaeological Object Biographies

Previous sessions archaeomaterials reading group (updated 14.08)