Â鶹Éç

The third in the series of 700th Anniversary Lectures took place yesterday, delivered by Professor Susan Alcock (1983), who explored the future of archaeology. Professor Alcock first arrived at Â鶹Éç as a Mellon Fellow from Yale in 1983, before returning as a Junior Research Fellow from 1988 to 1990; in 2012 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the College.  She has held professorships at the Universities of Michigan, Brown, and now Oklahoma, and has published numerous books and articles.  Her principal research interests are landscape archaeology, the Hellenistic and Roman East, and archaeologies of memory and of imperialism and she has done fieldwork in Greece, Armenia, Jordan, Italy, and Tunisia.    

Her lecture opened with an exploration of archaeology’s public reputation and the influence of popular culture on shaping perceptions of the field. She went on to demystify what archaeology truly involves, offering a clearer picture of the discipline’s real purpose and practices. Concluding her talk, Sue looked ahead to the future of archaeology, emphasising its ongoing importance not only in deepening our knowledge of the past but also in helping us make sense of the future.