McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research annual report 2018-19

Events and Outreach
Peterhouse Archaeology Summer School
L. Bonner
Peterhouse hosted and funded this year’s residential summer
school for sixth-formers, which took place 5–9 August 2019.
Like all Archaeology outreach events, it was entirely free
to attend and generous travel subsidies were available.
Thirty students took part coming from as far afield as Bristol,
Glasgow, Sunderland, Lancashire and the Czech Republic!
Following on from the successful summer schools hosted
by St John’s, Homerton and Trinity Colleges in previous
years, the programme was designed to expose participants
to the full intellectual breadth of the tripos, including
Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Egyptology and
Assyriology. Lectures and practical sessions were given on
topics including ancient diet, human behavioural ecology,
osteology, zooarchaeology, computational archaeology,
ancient Mesopotamia, artefact handling and Egyptian
language.
The highlight of this year’s summer school was the
opportunity for students to participate in excavation
training in the Fellows’ Garden at Peterhouse, led by
Richard Newman and Cat Collins of the Cambridge
Excavating in the Fellows’ Garden at Peterhouse for
the archaeology summer school.
Peterhouse archaeology summer school.
Archaeological Unit. Five test pits were excavated, two of
which encountered structural remains associated with
domestic properties that formerly fronted onto Trumpington
Street. Of these remains, one structure in particular consisted
of a substantial masonry building of probable late fifteenthcentury
date. The domestic properties were demolished
in the mid nineteenth century, at which time the Fellows’
Garden was also expanded from its original, late medieval
walled footprint. Made-ground deposits associated with this
latter event were identified in two further test pits, beneath
which stratified late medieval deposits were encountered.
We were tremendously impressed by participants’ liveliness,
friendliness, and intellectual capability. After the summer school
participants said, ‘The lectures and activities throughout the
week were all really interesting and the people in charge were
lovely. I especially enjoyed the Egyptian language session and
the dig in the grounds. I also found it very useful to look around
the uni and find out more about it. I enjoyed how it gave a
taster of different aspects of the course and I liked meeting
other people interested in similar things.’ We anticipate that
many summer school participants will apply to the archaeology
tripos for 2020 entry.
L. Bonner
Studying Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia at University: A Conference for Sixth-Formers
One of the distinctive features of the Cambridge archaeology tripos is that it includes Egyptology and Assyriology: students can
specialize in these subjects from the first year, or do them to a lesser extent in the first year and specialize in the second. With
this in mind, the fourth annual ‘Studying Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia at University’ conference for sixth-formers was held
at the Royal Asiatic Society and the British Museum on 2 March 2019. The event was organized by Dr Nancy Highcock.
Nearly 60 students from across the UK attended the conference. The students heard presentations by researchers from
Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, SOAS, Liverpool, Birmingham, Reading, Cardiff and UWTSD. They also enjoyed tours of the Egyptian
and Mesopotamian galleries at the British Museum and took part in a ‘treasure hunt’. There was the opportunity to meet
current students from many of the institutions in the UK that teach these subjects.
A panel on careers involving recent graduates showed the breadth of jobs to which degrees in Egyptology and Assyriology
can lead, from business and consultancy to commercial archaeology to further research. In feedback after the event, an
overwhelming majority of participants stated that it had made them more likely to study Egypt and Mesopotamia at University.
Archaeology at Cambridge 2018–2019 43