A weekend of free virtual talks:
all the latest archaeological discoveries and research from Britain and beyond
25-27 February 2022
Free, online
Join us for Current Archaeology Live! 2022, which will run from 25-27 February. Like last year, this year’s event is entirely online, and we have an excellent line-up of leading archaeological experts from across the UK to share their latest thinking on all aspects of the past.
In order to make the event as accessible as possible, all the talks have been pre-recorded and then uploaded to the Current Archaeology YouTube channel for you to enjoy at your leisure during the conference weekend. To join in, simply click on the talk titles in the list below. You can watch them in whatever order you prefer, at your convenience, with no concerns about sticking to a prescribed timetable (though, unfortunately, you will need to provide your own tea and biscuits for breaks this year!).
While we won’t be able to facilitate the usual live Q&A at the end of each talk, you can use this form here over the conference weekend for submitting questions to our speakers. We will pass them on to the archaeologists and answers will be posted on our website after the conference.
List of speakers
To watch a talk, click on the linked talk title and it will take you directly to the presentation in YouTube.
Secrets of the Cladh Hallan roundhouses
Professor Mike Parker Pearson
Trellyffaint and uncovering dairy farming in Neolithic Wales
Dr George Nash
Iron Age coins in Britain: new advances through Linked Open Data
Dr Courtney Nimura
Flipping the Script on Colonial Narratives: Replicating Roman Reliefs on the Antonine Wall
Dr Louisa Campbell
Roman Richborough: the amphitheatre and town
Tony Wilmott
Bridge over troubled water: the Roman finds from the River Tees at Piercebridge in context
Professor Hella Eckardt and Dr Philippa Walton
Monasteries in the Viking Age: Iona after AD 800
Dr Adrián Maldonado
Rediscovering Fountains Abbey through conservation technology
Mark Newman
Airfields and their potential for study
Dr Robert Clarke
Visualising Iron Age Shetland
Dr Li Sou
The treasure chest of textiles: scientific analyses of fibres and dyes of the 18th-century West African fabrics from Thomas Clarkson’s chest
Dr Margarita Gleba, Dr Malika Kraamer, and Sarah Coleman
Prehistoric diets in the Southern Levant
Dr Shyama Vermeersch
Archaeology in Japan: some reflections from the UK
Professor Simon Kaner
Beginning Beyond Notability: excavating the archives for women in archaeology, history, and heritage in Britain 1870-1950
Dr Amara Thornton
[This talk was available until 27 February 2022]
Playing the past: the archaeology of football and its social benefits
Dr Paul Murtagh
Visualising Dunhuang: the Mogao and Yulin Caves in China
Dr Dora C Y Ching
Conserving Stonehenge: the most major works on the sarsen lintels since the 1950s
Dr Heather Sebire
Libarna: putting together a fragmented history
Dr Katherine Huntley
The first pharaohs
Professor Aidan Dodson
1942: Britain at the brink
Taylor Downing
Mutiny in the Duchy: an American uprising in Second World War England
Kate Werran
Current Archaeology Awards
The winners of the 2022 Current Archaeology Awards will be announced by Julian Richards at 7pm on 25 February over on our YouTube channel. Voting has now closed – you can find out more about all the nominees by clicking here.
CA Live! Archaeology Fair 2022
An enduringly popular feature of CA Live! is our Archaeology Fair, which provides a wide range of exhibitors such as travel companies, booksellers, field schools, and other archaeological organisations.
This year we have taken the Archaeology Fair online, and are glad to welcome leading archaeological publishers, including Oxbow Books, Archaeopress, Princeton University Press and Wordwell (publishers of Archaeology Ireland), while those interested in archaeological travel can find out more about expert-led tours and heritage-themed holidays from Hidden History Travel. Specialist archaeological services are offered by Wessex Insurance, and a specialist heritage photography and 3D imaging service is provided by Aerial-Cam Ltd.
For readers with an interest in all things Roman, Vindolanda has extensive Roman remains to explore, live archaeology to watch, and thousands of artefacts on display.
If experimental archaeology is your thing, then be sure to take a look at Butser Plus, which shares the story of Butser Ancient Farm through a series of mini-documentaries.
For those intrigued by the prospect of studying archaeology at university, the Department of Archaeology at Cambridge is one of the oldest archaeological departments in the world. They offer a stimulating course that provides a thought-provoking insight into the diverse shapes of human societies and social power over time, with profound implications for the present.
And if you are interested in getting involved in a dig yourself, Kent Archaeological Field School runs a programme of archaeological subjects taught by experienced practitioners.