Ian Hodder was born in Bristol, England on November 23, 1948. He received a degree in prehistoric archaeology at the University of London in 1971 then went on to the University of Cambridge where he received his doctorate in spatial analysis in archaeology in 1974. He secured a position at the University of Leeds where he lectured from 1974-1977 then returned to Cambridge where he served in a number of positions before being appointed Professor of Archaeology from 1996 to 1999. In 1996 he was also named as a Fellow of the British Academy.
In 1999, he left Cambridge to accept an appointment at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University where, in 2002, he was named Dunlevie Family Professor.
Pre-eminent archaeologist of the Neolithic Near East
British archaeologist, James Mellaart, was born in London in 1925. His family moved to Holland where his father worked as an expert in Dutch old master paintings and drawings. At the outbreak of World War II, Mellaart secured a position at the museum in Leiden, where he worked until the war ended. Then he enrolled in University College in London where he studied egyptology. His studies led him to join the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey.
In the early 1950s, he began an archaeological survey of Anatolia. His first dig at Hacular produced a cache of painted pottery and female figurines that led to speculation about an early culture that worshipped a mother-goddess. Then, in November 1961, he began excavating a 20-meter high mound on the plains of Konya known locally as Çatalhöyük. There, he unearthed thirteen levels of occupation dating back over nine thousand years that contained the remains of a population center housing up to 10,000 people at its zenith.
For Dr. Robert Mason, an archaeologist with the Royal Ontario Museum, it all began with a walk last summer. Mason conducts work at the Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi monastery, out in the Syrian Desert. It’s still in use today by monks. The finds at the monastery date mainly to the medieval period and include some beautiful frescoes.
“I went for a walk into the eastern perimeter,” he said - an area that hasn’t been explored by archaeologists. What he discovered is an ancient landscape of stone circles, stone alignments and what appear to be corbelled roof tombs. From stone tools found at the site, it’s likely that the features date to some point in the Middle East’s Neolithic Period – a broad stretch of time between roughly 8500 BC – 4300 BC.
Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi (the monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian) is a Christian monastery in Syria. Its earliest date of use appears to be in 6th century AD, when it was used by cave dwelling hermit monks as a place to gather and pray. It reached its peak between the 11th and 12th centuries AD and several beautiful frescos have been recovered from that era.
Last summer Dr. Robert Mason, an archaeologist with the Royal Ontario Museum, made a far more ancient discovery. To the east of the site he found an ancient landscape with stone circles, alignments and what appear to be corbelled rock tombs.
From the stone tools found it appears to date to some point in the Middle East Neolithic period (8500-4300 BC). This means that this landscape could well be older then the megalithic sites found in Europe.
Professor Edward Banning is a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto in Canada. He holds a PhD in archaeology from the same institution.
His field research focuses on the Near East, in the Neolithic timeframe – a period when people began growing crops and living in small villages. It lasted from 8500 BC – 4300 BC. Urban life didn’t exist at this time anywhere in the world.
Professor Banning’s fieldwork includes the site of Ain Ghazal in Jordan. He is also director of the Wadi Ziqlab project which excavates and analyzes sites in Northern Jordan.
He is also interested, more generally, in archaeological theory, sampling, measurement and lab work. He wrote a book called The Archaeologist’s Laboratory, which explores these topics.
How did the people of the past interact with the Earth? Join the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research's expert teams to discover the many things that the remains of the past can tell us about how people lived.
Did you know that our ancestors gradually switched from collecting food from the wild to farming by keeping animals and growing crops? Learn how farming spread across Europe in our floor game and make your own Neolithic farmer to race across Europe… but beware, there are Mesolithic bandits waiting to ambush you! Find out what bones say about the way people lived in the past. Did Chris Caveman eat mammoths? Did Rachel Roman eat fish? Join our archaeobotanical group to recover cereals of the past, or perhaps the geoarchaeology group to discover the answer that lies in the soil!Don't forget to dig in the McDonald Great Cave... there is much to uncover and identify!
This event - part of the National Science and Engineering Week and the University of Cambridge Science Festival - takes place at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (Downing Site), Downing Street, Cambridge.
The West Kennet Barrow is a Neolithic Long Barrow situated near to the man-made Silbury Hill, Avebury, Wiltshire. John Aubrey recored the site in the 17th century, and William Stukeley later in the 18th century. West Kennet Barrow has been classified by archaeologists as a chambered long barrow, one which forms part of the Severn-Cotswold tombs. The entrance to the barrow consists of a concave forecourt, which acted to seal the entry made from sarsen stones.
Kennet Avenue is a prehistoric site in Wiltshire. It formed an avenue of two parallel lines of stones 25m wide and 2.5km in length which ran between the Neolithic sites of Avebury and The Sanctuary. In the 1930's, Stuart Piggott and Alexander Keiller indicated that about 100 pairs of standing stones had once lined the avenue around 2200 BC. Beaker burials were also found underneath some of the stones which date back to between 2400 - 1800 BC.
The Stonehenge Cursus, otherwise known as the Greater Cursus, is a large neolithic monument next to Stonehenge, Wiltshire. The Cursus is approximately 3km long and between 100 and 150m wide. In 2007 archaeolgical excavations dated the construction of the earthwork to between 3630 and 3375 BC. Thus, the Cursus is serveral hundred years older than Stonehenge, with its earliest phase dating back to 3000 BC.
For 
