Study Details: MA 1 year full-time,
2 years part-time,
3 years part-time
Get hands-on with the past with a Masters degree that teaches you all about artefacts and materials, exploring questions such as how objects were made, used and valued by past societies.
This course gives you key analytical skills in practical and theoretical approaches used to study material culture. In experimental archaeology, you get hands-on experience reconstructing ancient technologies and crafts as a way of better understanding the properties of different materials and how objects and buildings were made. Material culture studies involve working with and analysing objects and the materials from which they are made. You will explore objects and materials from different periods, giving you a fantastic insight into the archaeological record as well as developing skills for your future career.
Analysis of objects and materials is at the heart of archaeological practice, as well as museum curation and conservation. You will explore environmental contexts and important conservation questions such as preservation and decay. Digital and biomolecular methods are both strengths of York, and are increasingly being used in artefact studies. Our course allows you to choose modules that excite you across prehistory or historical periods and methodological specialisms.
2:2 or equivalent in Archaeology, Anthropology or a relevant subject.
Alternative qualifications and professional experience will also be considered.
For fees and funding options, please visit website to find out more
This course is also available as an MSc Material Culture and Experimental Archaeology.
This course will equip you for a number of careers in a diverse range of sectors, including the heritage sector, commercial archaeology, film, television and journalism. It will also give you a solid foundation for further study and research within academia.
Core modules
Experimental Archaeology
Thinking through Material Culture
Option modules
You will choose three option modules from examples including:
Artefacts and Materials Analysis
Digital Creativity
Virtual Reality and 3D Modelling
Any period specific module
You'll also have the opportunity to choose options from our full module catalogue:
Ancient Biomolecules
Animal Bones for Archaeologists
Archaeologies of Colonialism in the British Atlantic World
Becoming Human
Building Conservation Projects
Buildings Recording
Data Science for Archaeology
Death, Burial and Commemoration in the Roman World
Debates in Funerary Archaeology
Digital Approaches to Archaeology
Contemporary Issues in Museums
Critical Approaches to Archaeological Practice
GIS and spatial analysis
Heritage Principles and Concepts
Histories of Conservation
Landscape Survey and Geophysics
Life and Death in Iron Age Britain and Ireland
Making the Nation
Medieval Settlement and Communities
Mesolithic Life and Death
Museums, Audiences & Interpretation
Prehistoric Art: Origins and Transitions
Presenting Historic Houses
Project Management
Researching & Analysing Historic Buildings
Roman Archaeology: Ancient pasts, current issues
Roman Europe
Skeletal Evidence for Health in the Past
Sustainable Buildings
Sustainability I: definitions of sustainability & methods of assessment
Sustainability II: understanding sustainability as change through time
Sustainable Conservation Challenges
The Ancient Celts: Archaeology and Identity in Iron Age Europe
The Viking Age: People, Places, Things
The Archaeology of the Human Skeleton
The Archaeology of Roman Religion
Understanding & Interpreting Historic Buildings
Zooarchaeology in Context
Some option modules combinations may not be possible. The option available to you will be confirmed after you begin your course.
Our modules may change to reflect the latest academic thinking and expertise of our staff, and in line with Department/School academic planning.
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