Courses

The compulsory core course introduces students to a whole range of research skills and methods that will stay with you as you establish yourself as a researcher. Offering a range of transferable skills, this course will develop your potential for locating and working with resources, their critical evaluation, and the robust presentation of your ideas through written as well as spoken media. Providing a solid research grounding, our core course is the foundation for skills to enable you to get the maximum benefit from your 'Ancient Worlds' MSc online. It will also help ensure that you make the right course choices to meet your goals.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - Research Skills for Archaeology and Classics

This course examines how and why ideals and practices of marriage in later Roman and post-Roman societies shifted between c.400 and c.1000. Focussing on a range of primary sources, students will gain a detailed understanding of how marriage was contested, disputed and transformed in this period, and will carefully examine the social, political and religious contexts of these developments. Students will also critically examine strikingly different ways in which historians have debated the evolution of marriage, gender, family and kinship within grand narratives of the transition from antiquity to the middle ages.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - Debating Marriage Between Antiquity and the Middle Ages

During the New Kingdom (1550-1067 BCE), pharaonic Egypt reached its greatest extent, having expanded its borders both to Nubian territories in the south and to the Levant in the northeast. In this course we will discuss the different ways in which the Egyptians maintained control in these areas, to which degree the Egyptian presence influenced the local traditions and vica versa, what impact these encounters had on the Egyptian culture itself.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - Egypt and its neighbours during the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BCE)

An examination of the ancient Athenian Akropolis and its slopes from c. 3000 B.C. until the fourth century A.D. The site offers an opportunity to study not only art and archaeology but also religion and mythology.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - The Athenian Akropolis

The course is designed in particular for those with a special interest in early civilizations, the ancient Mediterranean world, and ancient art. It investigates the development of Etruscan society, one of the first urban civilizations in western Europe, from a formative stage in the Early Iron Age through the growth of the city state (10th-5th centuries BC), and the subsequent transformation associated with the expansion of Rome in the 4th/3rd centuries BC. A range of evidence is considered, primarily from archaeological sites, but also from art (e.g. pottery, tomb paintings, sculpture), literary sources, and inscriptions, permitting comparisons with contemporary developments elsewhere in the Mediterranean and western Europe.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - Etruscan Italy, 1000-300 BC

Herod ruled Judea, on traditional dating, from 40 - 4 BCE: a time of international transition. The Hellenistic era came to an end (30 BCE) in the face of Rome's supremacy, and the Roman state was itself revolutionised into the Augustan principate. So how does the king of Judaea, a territory on the periphery of Augustus' empire, fit in to this picture? This course will examine Herod's reign to elucidate the paradoxes and complexities of a monarchy that draw on Hellenistic traditions in a Jewish context under Roman rule.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - Herod the Great and the End of Hellenism

People move. Whether in small or large groups, mobility has always been a critical aspect of human history. This course will provide an overview on migratory processes from prehistory to the present, focusing on archaeological sources but also incorporating written evidence whenever available.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - Homo migrans: The archaeology of migrations from prehistory to the present

This course examines, critically, the concept of popular culture in the Roman world, asking was there such a thing as an identifiable popular culture in Antiquity, and if so, how can we, as modern scholars, access it? It enables students to study ancient history at an advanced level by requiring them to engage with both the 'primary' sources - artefacts of ancient literary and material culture - and with specialised, comparative and theoretical secondary material. Furthermore it encourages students to reflect on their own experience and that of our culture and bring insights from other historical periods and scholarly methodologies to their study of the past.

More information can be found on the course catalogue - Popular Culture in the Roman World