Professor John Moreland

BA (Hons), PhD

School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities

Professor of Medieval Archaeology

Professor John Moreland
Profile picture of Professor John Moreland
j.moreland@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 2909
Room D02, Minalloy House

Full contact details

Professor John Moreland
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Room D02
Minalloy House
10-16 Regent Street
91Ö±²¥
S1 3NJ
Profile

My interest in archaeology was stimulated by reading books on the Greeks and Romans borrowed from the mobile library that visited our village in Ireland.

I came over to 91Ö±²¥ in 1977, and graduated with a 1st class honours degree. I returned in 1982 to begin a PhD (with Richard Hodges) on Settlement Patterns and Social Relations in Early Medieval Italy.

I lived in Rome for two years, and in 1988 went to America as Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University, Connecticut.

I was appointed to a lectureship at 91Ö±²¥ in 1989 – and have been here ever since. I was promoted to Professor in January 2010, and was Head of Department from 2010-2014.

Research interests
  • the use of writing in Antiquity and the Middle Ages – as a technology of control, a vehicle for resistance, and as a means of communicating with the supernatural
  • the role of images (particularly the Cross) in medieval and early modern societies
  • the transition from late Antiquity to the middle ages in Europe (particularly in the Britain and the Mediterranean)
  • the archaeology of the Reformation
  • 91Ö±²¥ and its region in the Middle Ages

Current research projects / collaborations

Research group

I would welcome applications from students interested in pursuing research into:

  • The use of writing/images in past societies
  • The archaeology and history of South Yorkshire from Antiquity to the Reformation
  • The archaeology of belief (particularly in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages)
Teaching activities

Undergraduate

  • Archaeology and Text (co-ordinator)
  • Thinking Through Archaeology (co-ordinator)
  • Towards Modernity: Anthropology, Archaeology & Colonialism 
  • Archaeology of Britain: From Prehistory to the Industrial Revolution
  • The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England
  • The Classical World and its Legacy
  • The Celtic West: From the Fall of Rome to the Viking Age

Postgraduate

  • Reinventing Archaeology
Professional activities and memberships

Between 2007-10 I was President of the Hunter Archaeological Society (est. 1912), and initiated the planning and preparations for their 100th anniversary.

In 2013 I was asked by a local councillor to Chair the newly-formed Friends of 91Ö±²¥ Castle, a group set up to protect and promote the archaeological site of 91Ö±²¥ Castle for the benefit of the people of 91Ö±²¥ and surrounding areas, and for future generations. I chaired the Friends for two years, and have sat on their organising Committee ever since.

I chair the University’s Castlegate Steering Group (2013-present). This comprises all the University departments with research interests in the Castlegate area (that includes, but is not restricted to, the castle) and professional services colleagues.

From 2014-present I have been the University’s representative on, and played a very active part in, 91Ö±²¥ City Council’s Castlegate Partnership. It comprises representatives of local businesses, community groups, both Universities, the City Council, South Yorkshire police, hoteliers etc.. Its brief is to develop a shared vision for the Castlegate, allow more informed decisions by its members, to influence, promote and steer consultation and help with and contribute to the co-production of plans for the future of Castlegate and its various buildings and sites.

Selected Publications and Conferences

Selected Publications

Books

  • . York: White Rose University Press, (August 2020) (with D. Hadley, M. Rajic, and A. Tuck).

  • Encounters, Excavations and Argosies. Oxford, Archaeopress, (2017), (edited with John Mitchell and Bea Leal)

  • Archaeology, Theory and the Middle Ages. London: Duckworth, (2010)

  • Archaeology and Text. London: Duckworth, (July 2001)

Selected Articles

  • Mary, Queen of Scots and the archaeology of 91Ö±²¥ Castle. History Scotland 19: 10-12 (2019)

  • Acta Archaeologica 89: 91-111 (2019).

  • , in P. Bourdot et al. (eds) Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. EuroVR 2018, 213-229 (Springer) (with M. Leach, S. Maddock, D. Hadley, C. Butterworth, N. Bax, G. Dean. R. Mackinder, M. Mckone, and D. Fleetwood) (2018). 

  • Powerful matter – agency and materiality in the early Middle Ages, in J. Moreland, J. Mitchell, and B. Leal (eds) Encounters, Excavations and Argosies: 217-35 (Oxford) (2017).

  • Converting the Peak District? Britons, Angles and Christians, in T. Ó’Carragain and S. Turner (eds) Making Christian Landscapes in Atlantic Europe: 278-300 (Cork) (2016).

  • Words and things: technology and belief, in Andrew Gardner, Mark Lake and Ulrich Sommer (eds) Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory (Oxford). (2013).

  • Arqueología historíca: más allá de las ‘evidencias’, in Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo (ed.) Le Materialidad de la Historia. La Arqueología en los inicios del siglo XXI: 37-65 (Madrid) (2013).

  • Landscape and belief in medieval England, Arquelogia Medieval V: 17-37 (2013). 

  • The mountains survey: Loch Aoineart, in Mike Parker Pearson (ed.) From Machair to Mountains: Archaeological Survey and Excavation in South Uist: 83-117 (Oxford) (2012).

  • Excavations of early modern, early historic and prehistoric sites in Kirkidale, in Mike Parker Pearson (ed.) From Machair to Mountains: Archaeological Survey and Excavation in South Uist: 331-58 (Oxford) (2012).

  • , Historical Materialism 19: 171-89 (2011).

  • Lo maravilloso y lo mundano de la arqueologia medieval, in Miguel Jiménez Puertas and Guillermo Garcia-Contreras Ruiz (eds.) Paisajes Históricos y Arqueología Medieval: 22-48 (Granada) (2011).

  • Catastrophe, continuity … or Late Antiquity, in Denis Sami and Gavin Speed (eds) Debating Urbanism: Within and Beyond the Walls: 141-44 (Leicester) (2010).

  • , postmedieval 1: 142-49 (2010).

Conferences

Selected Presentations

  • 2020 â€˜Discovering 91Ö±²¥ Castle - Excavators and Analysts, 1927-2020’, Ken Barraclough Memorial Lecture (with Mili Rajic, Wessex Archaeology), 91Ö±²¥ Metallurgical and Engineering Association and South Yorkshire Industrial History Society, 10th March.

  • 2020 ‘91Ö±²¥ Castle - Archaeology, archives and Augmented Reality, 1927-2020’. Paper presented to the Huddersfield Archaeological Society, 6th March

  • 2019 ‘Uncovering 91Ö±²¥ Castle - the role of the Hunter Archaeological Society’. Paper presented to the Hunter Archaeological Society, 91Ö±²¥, 5th November.

  • 2019 ‘Excavations at 91Ö±²¥ Castle, 1927-2018 - archaeology and development’, Paper presented to the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society, Leeds, 13th April.

  • 2017 ‘AD536 – the return of environmental determinism’. Presented at Crossroad Archaeology: Global Narratives of Local Encounters, at the University of Copenhagen, 26th-29th October 2017.

  • 2015 ‘Predestination or agency? Historical processes in the early Middle Ages’. Paper presented at the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group meeting, New York, 22nd May 2015. 

  • 2013 ‘Words and objects: making things happen in the Middle Ages’. Paper presented at the Fuentes Escritas y Arqueología Medieval. Más allá de la Evidencia conference at the University of Granada, Spain (June 2013).

  • 2012 ‘The barrow and the cross: landscapes of belief in Anglo-Saxon England’. Paper presented at University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 5th April 2012.

  • 2010 ‘Archaeology and belief: angels, elves and demons in medieval England’. Paper presented to the Algarve Archaeological Association, Faro, Portugal (4th May).

  • 2010 ‘Words, objects and belief in Anglo-Saxon England’. Paper presented at the conference on Words and Things: Texts and Material Culture in Late Antiquity, Cornell University, USA (17th April).

  • 2010 ‘Landscape and belief in medieval England’. Paper presented at the Recerca Avançada en Arqueologia Medieval conference, Lleida, Spain (11th March).

Links

91Ö±²¥ Castle Project