Professor Michael Parker Pearson

Professor of Archaeology

Qualifications
BA, PhD

Email address
m.parker-pearson@sheffield.ac.uk

Telephone
(0)114 2222908

Department address
Department of Archaeology, Northgate House, University of Sheffield, West Street, Sheffield S1 4ET

Brief personal biography

Mike is an internationally renowned expert in the archaeology of death and also specialises in the later prehistory of Britain and Northern Europe and the archaeology of Madagascar and the western Indian Ocean. He has published 14 books and over 100 academic papers, on topics that range from architecture, food and warfare to ethnoarchaeology, archaeological theory and heritage management. He has worked on archaeological excavations in Britain, Denmark, Easter Island, Germany, Greece, Madagascar, Syria and the United States, and currently directs field projects in the Outer Hebrides, Madagascar and the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.

Mike was voted `Archaeologist of the Year´ for 2010. His Stonehenge Riverside Project also received the award of `Archaeological Research Project of the Year´ for 2010, after his team discovered `Bluestonehenge´, the remains of a second stone circle close to Stonehenge in 2009.

Mike joined the department in 1990, having worked as an archaeologist for English Heritage. He has a BA from Southampton University (1979) and a PhD from Cambridge University (1985). He has been a Member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists (MIFA) since 1989, Vice-President of the Prehistoric Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries since 1991.

Research interests

Death and burial: funerary archaeology
Stonehenge and the British Neolithic
Madagascar: society and change in the Indian Ocean
'Barbarian' Europe in the 1st millennia BC and AD
Public archaeology and heritage
Ethnoarchaeology and material culture

Current research projects / collaborations

Stonehenge Riverside Project
Feeding Stonehenge
Stones of Stonehenge Project
The Beaker People Project: migration, mobility and diet in Britain 2500-1700 BC
The Outer Hebrides: settlement and society from prehistory to the post-medieval period
Developing a 'mummy identification kit': mummification and bodily preservation in prehistoric Britain and Europe
Southern Madagascar: society and landscape from human arrival to the post-colonial period

Research supervision

Tom Booth
Christie Cox Willis
Nicole Roth

Teaching

• At 1st Year level, I contribute to teaching Archaeology in the Field, World Civilisations, and Discoverers and Discoveries.
• For 2nd and 3rd Year undergraduates, I teach Later European Prehistory, Iron Age Europe, and Funerary Archaeology.
• At postgraduate level, I teach Funerary Archaeology.

Selected publications

• Parker Pearson, M. (ed.) 2012. From Machair to Mountains: archaeological survey and excavation in South Uist. SEARCH monograph 4. Oxford: Oxbow.
• Parker Pearson, M. with Godden, K., Heurtebize, G., Radimilahy, C., Ramilisonina, Retsihisatse, Schwenninger, J.-L. and Smith, H. 2010. Pastoralists, Warriors and Colonists: the archaeology of southern Madagascar. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (International Series) S2139.
• Aaronson, M. with Parker Pearson, M. 2010. If Stones Could Speak: unlocking the secrets of Stonehenge. Washington DC: National Geographic Society.
• Larsson, M. and Parker Pearson, M. (eds) 2007. From Stonehenge to the Baltic: cultural diversity in the third millennium BC. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 1692.
• Parker Pearson, M. 2005. Bronze Age Britain. London: Batsford.