McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

McDonald Institute

The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research serves as an interdisciplinary hub aiming to provide a shared intellectual home for archaeologists at Cambridge with a programme of seminars, workshops, conferences, publications and research grants as well as laboratory space for a wide range of archaeological research which crosses continents, periods and approaches in its exploration of the diversity of the human past.

Division of Archaeology

The Division of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge is a world-leading centre for the study of the human past across the globe, from the Palaeolithic to the present.

NOW AVAILABLE - Preludes to Urbanism

This newest volume in the McDonald Institute Monographs Series explores early complex society and nascent urbanism, based in studies of Mesopotamia during the fifth–fourth millennia BC. The authors use multi-scalar approaches, including material culture-based studies, settlement archaeology and regional surveys, to achieve an understanding of the dynamics of early urbanism across this key region. The book reveals the variety of social, economic and political relationships that are implicit within an urban centre and an urbanized society.

Living in the Landscape

Now published, this edited volume reflects on the multitude of ways by which humans shape and are shaped by the natural world, and how Archaeology and its cognate disciplines recover this relationship. The structure and content of the book recognize Graeme Barker’s pioneering contribution to the scientific study of human–environment interaction, and form a secondary dialectic between his many colleagues and past students and the academic vista which he has helped define. This newest volume in the McDonald Institute Monographs series comprises 22 thematic papers, arranged chronologically, each a presentation of front-line research in their respective fields.