Duncan Garrow

Duncan Garrow’s research interests include the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition; long-term histories of deposition; burial practices; the integration of commercial sector and university-based archaeology; archaeological theory; and interdisciplinary approaches to material culture. He teaches later European prehistory (with a particular focus on Britain) and archaeological theory at the University of Reading. Duncan previously worked at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit (1996-2002), which he left to undertake his PhD on Neolithic and Early Bronze Age pits in East Anglia. He recently co-directed (with Fraser Sturt) a number of excavations in the Channel Islands, the Outer Hebrides and the Isles of Scilly as part of the Neolithic Stepping Stones project, published by Oxbow Books in 2017. Duncan is currently working on a book exploring ‘ritual’ deposition in British prehistory, from the Palaeolithic through to the Iron Age.

Melanie Giles

Melanie Giles is Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, and a specialist on the Iron Age, particularly Celtic art, crafting and power, the square barrow burials and chariots of Yorkshire, as well as the bog bodies of north-western Europe. She works not just on the analysis and interpretation of burials but on aspects of visualisation and display. Her publications include ‘A forged glamour: landscape, identity and material culture in the Iron Age’ (2012, Windgather Press) and the recent edited volume with Howard Williams ‘Archaeologists and the Dead: Mortuary Archaeology in Contemporary Society’ (2016, Oxford University Press).

Neil Wilkin

Neil Wilkin’s research aims to integrate strands of material evidence in order to understand the British and European Bronze Age at a range of scales. Particular research interests include: Bronze Age ceramics; socio-economic links between Bronze Age ceramics and metalwork; ritual and deposition in its regional and landscape setting; funerary practices and the material culture of death; and new approaches to the study and creation of classifications and typo-chronologies. Prior to joining the British Museum, Neil worked at the University of Aberdeen’s Marischal Museum on the The Beakers and Bodies Project (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) and completed an AHRC-funded PhD on Early Bronze Age pottery and burials of Northern England.

Anwen Cooper

Anwen Cooper is interested in the later Bronze and Iron Ages in north-west Europe, interpretative approaches to material culture and landscape, critical approaches to archaeological practice, and prehistoric pottery. Following ten years of fieldwork (survey and excavation) from 1996-2006, her PhD offered a multidisciplinary perspective on research in British prehistory over the last 40 years. Before beginning work on the Grave Goods project she was a postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded ‘Island of the dead?’ project (University of Durham) and then the ERC-funded English Landscape and Identities project (EngLaId) (University of Oxford). As well as working closely with artists and members of the public throughout her career, Anwen has sought persistently to make links between research in different archaeological arenas. She currently advises on research practices in Historic England and Oxford Archaeology, and is working with Stewart Bryant to produce an oral history of HERs. Recent publications have explored the (positively) ‘characterful’ nature of data in British archaeology, the interpretative consequences of ‘big data’, the multi-temporal qualities of Bronze Age round barrows, and the idea of Roman villas as condensed landscapes.

Catriona Gibson

Catriona Gibson has worked extensively in both commercial and academic archaeology. Her PhD at the University of Reading focused on the later Bronze Age of Western Iberia. After many years in the field, predominantly working for Wessex Archaeology, she became a researcher on the Ancient Britain in the Atlantic Zone project (ABrAZo), and helped develop the AHRC-funded Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages Project (AEMA), both based at the University of Wales. Her research interests include exploring evidence for connectivity and mobility during later prehistory, and forging stronger bridges between developer-led and academic archaeology. She has also worked on many archaeological investigations abroad, including Portugal, Cyprus, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, and currently supervises excavations at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney. She co-edited Memory, Myth and long-term Inhabitation with Adrian Chadwick (2013) and is completing books on Bronze Age Atlantic Europe and the Chalcolithic West Mound excavations at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, which she co-directed with Jonathan Last.

Project advisory panel:

Emily Bateman (Sheffield/Snowdonia National Park)

Harry Fokkens (Leiden)

Chris Gosden (Oxford)

Jacqueline McKinley (Wessex Archaeology)

Chris Scarre (Durham)

Alison Sheridan (NMS)

Alex Smith (Headland Archaeology)