Michael Shanks

Biography

My archaeology began in the Roman borders of the north of England and Scotland, excavating Hadrian’s Wall and then the great medieval city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I have delved deeply into the early Greek cities in the Mediterranean, into early farming societies and their monuments in Wessex and Sweden. Archaeology is beginning to produce some fascinating new stories of early agriculture, the first cities and empires, and how much the modern world has in common with antiquity. My archaeology is a bridging field. For me, archaeologists do not ”discover the past”; they work on what remains. Archaeology is about our relationships with what is left of the past.

Research Interest

Design history and research; archaeological theory; heritage studies and archaeologies of the contemporary past; the archaeology of Grece-Roman urbanism; the regional archaeology of the English-Scottish borders.