UCL Institute of Archaeology - British Museum Medieval Seminar

05/04/2026

Midlands friends! Rory Naismith, our October 2025 speaker, is giving a talk about his fabulous new book in Nottingham in May. Details and tickets here:

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01/12/2025

*TOMORROW!* It's our last seminar of 2025! We welcome Professor Oliver Creighton (Exeter) for his paper, entitled: Medieval warhorse: the archaeology of a medieval revolution?
Please join us in Room 205 at UCL Institute of Archaeology at 6:15pm for what promises to be a fascinating paper. As always, the lecture is free and open to all. We look forward to seeing you there!

Professor Creighton's abstract:
The image of the armoured knight mounted on his warhorse and charging into battle or to the tournament field is one of the most evocative of the Middle Ages. The horse was central to the image of the medieval warrior-aristocrat and changed the face of warfare. This lecture explores what archaeology can tell us about medieval warhorses, including their size, appearance and equipment. It presents some headline results from a research project on warhorses, and horses generally, in England between the Saxon and Tudor periods. It will consider the physical remains of horses (bones and teeth, including small samples taken for scientific analyses), equestrian material culture (apparel such as harness pendants, and
horse armour), horse breeding landscapes (studs and stables), as well as iconographic and documentary evidence, to present a new and more rounded understanding of the warhorse and unpick its complex, fascinating and ever-evolving interrelationship with medieval society through the centuries.

03/10/2025

An upcoming event that will surely interest many of you, featuring former British Museum exhibition project curator (Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint) Dr Sophie Kelly. Details here 👇

Join Dr Sophie Kelly for a talk on the making and meaning of medieval croziers in the decades either side of the Norman Conquest. Croziers, the sceptre-like staffs granted to bishops, abbots, and abbesses across Europe as a sign of authority, are one of the most distinctive symbols of ecclesiastical...

03/10/2025

Friends and colleagues - unfortunately our mailings are being marked as spam by a huge number of recipients :(

If you are on our mailing list, we'd appreciate it if you could add our e-mail addresses (on the latest programme) to your safe list.

And if you would like to be added to or removed from our mailing list, just drop Sue a line.

We look forward to seeing you at a future event!

22/09/2025

Dear friends and colleagues

We're delighted to share the programme for the 2025/6 UCL IoA-BM Seminar Series! It is due to be an exciting year. The first meeting is the annual Sir David Wilson lecture on Wednesday 8 October 2025, which will be given by Professor Rory Naismith. All other meetings take place on Tuesdays at UCL IoA, and please be sure to check the room numbers for the talks this year.

This year we also welcome Dr Murray Andrews as UCL IoA co-convenor while Andrew is on sabbatical, although Andrew will be with us for the Sir David Wilson lecture.

We all look forward to welcoming you back to UCL IoA in October!

02/09/2025

Friends and colleagues! Autumn begins, and we are putting the finishing touches to our exciting 2025/6 seminar programme. We'll post it here as soon as it's ready, so keep your eyes peeled 🧐 Looking forward to welcoming you all back to Gordon Square in October!

17/03/2025

Dear friends!

A gentle reminder of our final seminar for the 2024/5 series, which will take place tomorrow 18 March at 18:15 in Room 612 at UCL Institute of Archaeology.

In a slight departure from our usual format, the seminar will take the form of a panel discussion entitled Material matters: Models of trade and exchange between east and west in the early middle ages. The participants are:
• Chair: Professor Hugh Kennedy (SOAS)
• Panellists: Dr Jane Kershaw (Associate Professor, Oxford); Dr Paul Wordsworth (UCL); Dr Sue Brunning (British Museum)

The panel discussion will be followed, as is customary, by a drinks reception in the Common Room (609) to celebrate the year’s series, and to launch new books by both Professor Kennedy and Dr Wordsworth.

As always, the seminar is free and open to all. We look forward to seeing you there!

21/02/2025

A gentle reminder of the next seminar in our 2024/25 series, which will take place next Tuesday 25 February at 18:15 in Room 612 at UCL Institute of Archaeology.

We look forward to welcoming Zumrad Ilyasova, project curator for the British Museum’s blockbuster Silk Roads exhibition:

Sogdian silks? On the Representation of Textiles in Sogdian Wall Paintings
The Sogdians, an Iranian-speaking people that inhabited the territories of present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are known to some as traders along the Silk Roads active during the first millennium CE. They reached the courts of Justinian in the West and the Tang emperors in the East through their mobility and diplomatic skills. Lesser known are the rich pictorial worlds they have created on wall paintings that decorated nearly every temple, palace, and residency in their home cities and settlements and other artistic media such as wood carvings, metalwork, and terracotta. The question of whether Sogdians were also responsible for creating complex woven silk fabrics decorated with animals inside roundels is still debated. However, their numerous presence in the paintings testifies to their great appreciation by Sogdian elites. The talk will focus on patterned silk fabrics represented in the paintings from key Sogdian sites and situate them within the broader history of material, technological, and artistic exchange along the Silk Roads.

Silk Roads closes this coming Sunday 23 February, so it will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about some of the spectacular items that travelled to the UK for the first time to feature in the exhibition.

As ever, the seminar is free and open to all. We look forward to seeing you there!

Photo: Trustees of the British Museum

24/01/2025

📣Notice of an upcoming talk that will no doubt interest our audience! 📣

Arranged by Tarbat Discovery Centre, Victoria Thompson Whitworth for a lecture on the origin of the spectacular Book of Kells. In-person and online! Details and tickets here:

Who were the Picts, the people who lived in Scotland around 300-900 CE? Remarkable standing stones are their main legacy - but ...

21/01/2025

With apologies for the short notice (I have been travelling for work), a last-minute reminder for our next seminar which will take place this evening in Room 612 at UCL Institute of Archaeology, beginning at 6:15pm.

We look forward to welcoming back Professor Chris Scull, for a talk entitled ‘Excavations at Rendlesham, Suffolk, 2021–2023: investigating an early medieval royal settlement’. Abstract:
Excavations undertaken through community archaeology on the early medieval settlement complex at Rendlesham in 2021–2023 provided an opportunity to test and enhance interpretations drawn from survey data, and in particular to investigate the physical structures and built environment of the settlement, its development and chronology, and its farming economy and environment. Major structures investigated included a timber great hall of the 7th to early 8th centuries and the perimeter ditch that enclosed the royal compound. A large faunal assemblage provides insights into animal husbandry, provisioning and consumption, and metalworking detritus confirms the presence of craftsmen working for elite patrons. Scientific dating complements the chronology inferred from metal-detected finds, and investigation of buried sediments in the river floodplain has established the immediate environment of the early medieval settlement and long-term human impacts in this part of the Deben valley. This presentation offers an oversight of the results and their implications, and considers the experience of significant public involvement in archaeological research.

As always, the talk is in-person, free and open to all. We look forward to welcoming you later!

02/12/2024

*TOMORROW*

The next seminar in our 2024/5 series takes place tomorrow at 18:15 in Room 612 at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. We welcome Murray Andrews from UCL IoA for a paper entitled 'All that Glistens? The Role(s) of Gold Coinage in Northern Europe, c.1250-1550'

As always, the seminar is free and open to all. We hope to see you there!