UCL Institute of Archaeology research in this area focuses on the materiality and history of religions as well as the construction and use of ritual and cosmological landscapes.

Institute research is concerned with integrated studies of the archaeology and history of religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, Christianity and syncretism, and classical Greece. Ancient Egypt remains a singular strength at the Institute. The Institute is unmatched in its geographic spread and range of approaches to landscape archaeology - researchers explore the symbolic significances of places, the construction and use of ritual landscapes and funerary landscapes including Stonehenge, Madagascar, Rapa Nui, and India. Staff engage in the broadest spectrum of methods for studying prehistoric and historic landscapes including phenomenology and anthropological studies.
Projects
Current projects
- Becoming Muslim: Cultural Change, Everyday Life and State Formation in early Islamic North Africa (600-1000) (EVERYDAYISLAM)
- Buddhist monasteries and monasticism in ancient India
- Bulla Regia Archaeological Project
- Citizenship and Religion in 1st Millennium BC Mediterranean: Etruria and Iberia
- Environmental Ethics in Ancient India
- Landscape, Water and Religion in Ancient India
- Making Oasis Civilisation in the Moroccan Sahara (OASCIV)
- The Myth of Human Sacrifice
- PARINÃ - Memorialising Ancestral Landscapes of the Brazilian Northwest Amazon
- Radical Death and Early State Formation in the Ancient Near East
- Ramtek Survey
- Rapa Nui Landscapes of Construction
- Sanchi Survey Project
- St Patrick’s Chapel Excavation Project
- The Stones of Stonehenge
- Transition in Maya culture and history