Environmental Archaeology MSc

About this degree

Environmental archaeology is an interdisciplinary field encompassing sciences both for fieldwork and in the laboratory, that not only enrich archaeological interpretation but also contribute an archaeological perspective on the long-term legacy of human and environment interactions that have relevance for the future of our planet.

We recognize that the Anthropocene is an epoch in which human actions have become a a geological force influencing climate and biodiversity, but the human behaviours that contribute to these have long histories. Humans have impacted the landscape and environment locally, regionally and perhaps globally, and these effects stretch back to before written records. Environmental archaeology gathers the empirical evidence for how people have used and transformed the environment, including resources from animals and plants, as well as soil and sedimentary systems.

Environmental archaeology works through datasets that are not strictly speaking artefacts but remains of other organisms, soils and sediments, recovered routinely on excavations. Research questions in the field can grouped as addressing issues about focusing food/diet in the past or past land use and landscape reconstruction. This MSc programme addresses these research questions by drawing on research fields of archaeobotany (plants), zooarchaeology (animals) and geoarchaeology (sediments). It stretches across time from early hunter-gatherer societies through domestication and the origins of agriculture, to agricultural intensification, complex societies and world systems. Through the core courses students develop an understanding of formation processes and their implications for developing sampling strategies, and for the critical assessment of environmental archaeology datasets.

In addition, each student gains practical experience in laboratory analysis of at least one of the sub-fields: identification of animal bones, identification of plant macro-remains, or geoarchaeology (micromorphological and sedimentological analyses). They are trained to collect and analyse data in this field, to follow this through labwork and to report scientific results to a high standard.

This MSc provides participants with a theoretical understanding of research questions and methodologies in the study of past human-environment interactions, including subsistence and subsistence change. The Institute of Archaeology has a long research and training tradition in environmental archaeology and has well-established laboratory facilities and reference collections as a result.

A minimum of an upper second-class Bachelor's degree in a relevant subject from a UK university or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard.

The English language level for this programme is: Level 2

UCL Pre-Master's and Pre-sessional English courses are for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL. The courses will develop your academic English and academic skills required to succeed at postgraduate level.

Further information can be found on our English language requirements page.

A successfully completed dissertation for the MSc in Environmental Archaeology course, coupled with graduates' assessed participation in specifically-designed Environmental Archaeology core modules, provides a demonstration of graduates' ability to undertake hands-on research in a given specialism (zooarchaeology; archaeobotany; geoarchaeology) and equips them with significant background training to engage environmental archaeological aspects within developer-funded archaeology.