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Lecture Series
Since 2020, we have offered our lecture series online so that we can continue to bring the USAS to those of you who have been such valuable supporters over the years. We also hope that by doing so we might keep spreading the USAS word wider.
Details of our 2024/2025 lecture series are given below and our next series will start in September 2025
Check back later for further details, or see our Sussex Archaeology and History website to keep up to date with our lectures and other events we organise!
Recordings of all lectures, with the exception of November 2024, are available to our subscribers - contact us for further details.
Previous Lectures this academic year
Lecture series 2024/2025
Wednesday 16th April 2025
THE USAS HOLLEYMAN ONLINE ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE 2025
With this ring..... An exploration of the form and function of finger rings from Prehistory to the Post Medieval period
Speaker: Jane Clark (PAS Finds Liaison Officer for Sussex)
Finger rings are a common form of jewellery and easily lost; consequently they are often found by metal detectorists and recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Aside from being items of adornment, some rings have secondary functions and were also a prominent way to define cultural and social identities around wealth; gender, marital status; religious and superstitious beliefs.
Join Jane Clark, Sussex Finds Liaison Officer to explore the different forms, functions and meanings behind these extremely personal items of adornment using PAS data, with examples considered from the Bronze Age to the Post Medieval period.
Recording available for our subscribers - email us for further information
GEORGE ALFRED HOLLEYMAN (1910-2004)
George Holleyman, who owned a well-known antiquarian bookshop in Duke Street, Brighton, was a respected amateur archaeologist. George’s extensive fieldwork in Sussex is recorded in his many publications (1934-1976). He joined the Sussex Archaeological Society in 1946, serving on its Council from 1948-1984, after which he was a vice-president from 1987.
Wednesday 19th March 2025: USAS ONLINE LECTURE
Maritime connections and shared beliefs across the North Sea in the 5th and 6th centuries. The iconography of gold bracteates
Speaker: Dr Charlotte Behr (University of Roehampton)
Research of the period between the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early 5th century and the first emergence of kingdoms in the later 6th century in eastern Britain is mainly based on archaeological sources. Among them gold bracteates – round pendants with various stamped images – and their specific find circumstances provide important evidence for political and religious connections among local elites around the North Sea coasts.
Recording available for our subscribers - email us for further information
Gold bracteate from Binham, Norfolk
Wednesday 19th February 2025: USAS ONLINE LECTURE
The bio-cultural history of the rabbit, brown hare, and domestic cat
Speaker: Dr Sean Doherty (University of Exeter)
This lecture will present new research that overturns the received wisdom on the timing and circumstances of the rabbit, brown hare, and cat's domestication and their European dispersal. It will also chart these species shifting relationships with people through time, as pets, pests, and divine creatures.
Recording available for our subscribers - email us for further information
Wednesday 22nd January: USAS ONLINE LECTURE
Heathfield Down: An Alternative Location for the Battlefield of Hastings,1066
Speakers: Dr Rebecca Welshman and Simon Coleman
Dr Rebecca Welshman and Simon Coleman will present evidence for an alternative location of the 1066 Battle of Hastings. N.B. This lecture is based on Rebecca and Simon’s recent publication of an article in the International Journal of Military History and Historiography (May 2024). The researchers will present evidence supporting an alternative location than at Battle for the battlefield of Hastings. They will examine the military situation and strategic possibilities that arose from the Norman landing, as well as the likelihood that the ‘haran apuldran’ (‘Hore Apple Tree’) mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D text served as a military assembly point. They propose that ‘Horeappletree Common,’ with its landmark tree, survived for centuries on the downs of Heathfield, marking the boundary between the rapes of Pevensey and Hastings. Numerous overlooked 18th and 19th century texts, along with historic place names and a long-standing tradition of a Saxon-era battle, indicate a specific area once known as ‘Slaughter Common,’ near the town of Heathfield. Some of these texts even refer to the battle as ‘Heathfield’ rather than ‘Hastings.’ The researchers will analyse communication links and the topography to demonstrate how a battlefield at Heathfield Down could have played a role in the fateful 1066 campaign. The speakers hope that their research, as well as possibly relevant finds from the 1970s, will lead to an archaeological investigation of the Slaughter Common site. Should an alternative location for the Hastings battlefield be confirmed through archaeology, it would have significant implications for the broader history of Sussex.
Recording available for our subscribers - email us for further information
Wednesday 27th November 2024: USAS ONLINE LECTURE
THE SALLY CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE 2024
‘Down these viae sordidae'
Speaker: Lindsey Davis (Author & Historical Novelist)
Lindsey Davis will talk about her life as a historical novelist, with particular reference to using Fishbourne Roman Palace as a location in A Body in the Bathhouse.
Lindsey is best known for Roman detectives, Marcus Didius Falco, and his daughter Flavia Albia. She has also written standalones, a Quickread and novellas. Her books are translated and have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her awards include the Premio Colosseo (from the city of Rome), the Crimewriters’ Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement, and most recently the Ivanhoe Award, given to historical novelists in Spain. Lindsey has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters, the Classical Association and the UK Society of Authors.
SALLY CHRISTIAN
Sally developed a passion for archaeology as a mature student at the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) at the University of Sussex. Before her death due to cancer whilst still studying at CCE, Sally very generously established at Sussex University a Fund to help finance similar part-time older students, and also sixth-formers wishing to experience some archaeology before applying to university, to undertake practical archaeology training courses. Following the demise of CCE, the remainder of the Sally Christian Archaeology Bequest was transferred for administrative purposes to the Sussex Archaeological Society. To remember Sally, the University of Sussex Archaeological Society (USAS) holds an annual memorial lecture.
Lindsey Davis
Wednesday 16th October 2024, 7.30pm : USAS ONLINE LECTURE
Plumpton Place: Research Survey and Excavation 2019 -2023
Speaker: Diccon Hart (HB Archaeology and Conservation Ltd)
Plumpton Place, East Sussex, comprises a late 16th century manor house, built on the site of an earlier house. It looks onto the nearby north-facing escarpment of the South Downs. A former owner (1972-1985) was Led Zepplin guitarist Jimmy Page. It was used as the main location for the 2019 film adaptation of Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.
This lecture will report and discuss the results of a collaborative approach to work undertaken at the property since 2019, including research, excavations (both within the building and on the moat platform), historic building surveys, geophysics and dendrochronology. This research was undertaken by Diccon Hart (field archaeologist) & Maggie Henderson (buildings archaeologist) of HB Archaeology & Conservation.
Recording available for our subscribers - email us for further information
Wednesday 25th September 2024, 7.30pm : USAS ONLINE LECTURE
The South Downs Explored from Above
Speaker: Gary Webster (Heritage officer, National Trust)
Gary is Heritage Officer with the National Trust’s Changing Chalk project. He will talk about Changing Chalk, a project looking at the restoration of Chalk Grassland. He works specifically through the lens of heritage and will discuss ‘Downs from Above’, a project that used aerial photographs, both old and new, of the South Downs north of Brighton, together with lidar images from laser scans. Not only have new features been discovered but the true character of existing features is being recognised for the first time. He will also talk about Monument Mentors – How we can work together to ensure that the Monuments on the downland are cared for.
Recording available for our subscribers - email us for further information
Previous Years' Lectures
You can still view the details of our previous online lectures
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