This course introduces students to world prehistory and to the fundamental questions of archaeological investigation, chiefly those that concern human biological, social and cultural evolution, the origins of sedentism and domestic economies, and the emergence of palace civilisations. Students study the relationship between humans and other primates, the timescale of human evolution, the emergence of ancient and modern humans, the development of sedentism, agriculture, and monumental architecture, the rise of palatial civilisations in the Mediterranean (including Greece and Egypt), and complex mobile communities of the Iron Age.

On completion of the module a student should be able to:
 Knowledge and Understanding:

Students should know the following:

When and where our earliest ancestors appeared; the differences between each of our hominid ancestors in terms of biology and behaviour; when and where anatomically modern humans appeared and how they spread across the globe; when humans first created “art”, grew domesticated crops and animals, settled down to permanent habitation, created material culture, formally deposited the dead, and used metal ores; when and where early palace civilisations appeared.

 Students should understand the following:

How and why humans are different from other animals; the consequences of human abilities and decisions to use symbols, to domesticate plants and animals, to lead settled lives, to make and use material culture, to bury the dead and to use metal, and to create complex administrative centres.

Intellectual Skills:

Students should be able to do the following:To use a diverse range of written sources to collect detailed information about the human past; to critically assess such information; to use such information in order to present written and oral reports. 

Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills:

 Students should be able to do the following:

To read academic texts, to extract detailed information about the archaeological record and its interpretation and to organise this information to address research questions.

 Transferable Skills:

Students should be able to do the following:

To read critically and efficiently; to write and speak clearly and with effect; to organise and plan, focused tasks of research.

This module is taught though eleven, 50-minute lectures and two, 50-minute seminars. Students learn by reading required texts, by responding to questions during lectures, by leading and contributing to seminar discussions, by researching, planning and writing an essay plan with full references, by writing a 1500 word essay, and by answering in writing an exam question.

Assessed work includes student’s planning, researching and writing a detailed essay-plan with full references, 10%by writing a 1500-word essay 40% and by reading and revising for and writing a one-question, 60-minute exam.50%

This module introduces you to human prehistory on a world scale and stretches from the appearance of hominins to the emergence of civilisation. Particular attention is focused on the evolution of human and non-human primates, the peopling of the world, first by early humans and then by anatomically modern humans, and the development of agriculture in the Near East and Europe. Finally, we discuss the emergence of the first states in the Near East and Central and South Americas.

The three following key texts (which will be of use for this and other modules in the first year and beyond) should be available at the University Blackwells.