Dr Stuart Brookes
Senior Teaching Fellow
Institute of Archaeology
Faculty of S&HS
- Joined UCL
- 1st Nov 2014
Research summary
Current Research
Early Medieval Atlas: The Early Medieval Atlas is a long-term collaborative venture which is collating and analysing spatial evidence for early medieval Britain.
Travel and communication in Anglo-Saxon England: The subject of travel and communication is central to the study of society in any period, important for matters of commerce, warfare, polity-identity, etc. This 3-year Leverhulme Trust-funded research project will be the first interdisciplinary, national study of the routeway infrastructure of Anglo-Saxon England (ASE), drawing upon historical, archaeological, landscape, linguistic and literary sources.
Research Interests
- Geographical approaches to state formation. Spatial manifestations of culture. Border and frontier formation. Heterarchies and hierarchies. Analysis of territories, especially hundreds, parishes, shires, kingdoms. GIS approaches to modeling communications and settlement patterns.
- The development of towns, particularly ports and strongholds. Plan-form analysis of towns and fortifications. Linking urban development to coastal reconstruction.
- Databasing and quantitative analysis of inter-disciplinary data. I have been compiling large datasets of burial evidence; settlement data; place-names and historical data, and am interested in ways of compiling, interrogating and disseminating large datasets.
- Social organization as interpreted from burial. Chronological and spatial patterns in intra- and inter- cemetery assemblages. Statistical and macro-economical approaches to cemetery data.
- Nails, clench-nails and bolts, and their use in boats, doors, beds, coffins, etc.
- Phenomenological approaches to landscape. How to characterize and document ‘places’. Viewshed and soundshed analysis.
- Archaeology of Kent, London, southern England, Germany, Scandinavia.
Collaborations
- Prof Iñaki Martín Viso, University of Salamanca, 'Local territories and identities in the early medieval centre of Iberian Peninsula: a spatial analysis of rock-cut graves'
- Dr Sue Harrington, UCL Institute of Archaeology Beyond the Tribal Hidage
- Dr Mark Pearce, The University of Nottingham Trent Valley GeoArchaeology
- Thames Discovery Programme
- Birkbeck, University of London, Archaeology
- Oxford University Department for Continuing Education
- Friends of Thynghowe
Previous Research Projects
- Beyond the Burghal Hidage
- Landscapes of Governance
- Travel and communication in Anglo-Saxon England
Teaching summary
Course Co-ordinator: ARCL0085 London before the Great Fire
Current PhD students:
- Scott Chaussee Social landscape of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Sussex Hana Lewis Pattern and process in Anglo-Saxon rural settlement (principal supervisor Andrew Reynolds)
- Victoria Ziegler Urban occupation identities in Saxon London c.770 - 1020: a new approach to questions of urban development and trans-location in early medieval England (joint principal supervisors Louise Martin & Andrew Reynolds)
Completed PhD students:
- Rosalind Broadley From wics to monasteries and palaces: Early Medieval vessel glass from settlement contexts (principal supervisor Andrew Reynolds)
- Hana Lewis Pattern and process in Anglo-Saxon rural settlement archaeology (principal supervisor Andrew Reynolds)
- Jay Rees Settlement Patterns in Roman Galicia: 27BC – Second Century AD (principal supervisor Andrew Gardner)
- Tom Williams Landscape and warfare in early medieval Britain (principal supervisor Andrew Reynolds)
Education
- Birkbeck College
- Other Postgraduate qualification (including professional), Postgraduate Certificate | 2003
- University College London
- Doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy | 2003
- University College London
- Other higher degree, Master of Arts | 1998
- University College London
- First Degree, Bachelor of Arts (Honours) | 1996
Biography
- BA, PGD Till, MA, PhD, FSA
- Leverhulme Trust Research Associate
- Honorary Reader
- Editor, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine
Educational Background
- 2008: PGD in Teaching in Lifelong Learning, Birkbeck, University of London
- 2003: PhD Archaeology – UCL Institute of Archaeology
- 2003: PGC in Teaching in Lifelong Learning, Birkbeck, University of London
- 1998: MA Research Methods for the Humanities – UCL Institute of Archaeology
- 1996: BA Medieval Archaeology – UCL Institute of Archaeology