Gordon Childe Lecture 2025

Speaker: Professor Liv Nilsson Stutz (Linnaeus University, Sweden)

Abstract

How can archaeologists understand the human experience of death in the deep past? More specifically, how can the archaeological record, comprised of fragmented material traces of past people’s actions when faced with death, offer meaningful insights into past lives?

This lecture explores key themes including belief, ritual, cosmology, emotion, and concepts of body and self. Drawing on the legacy of Gordon Childe’s contributions to archaeological thought, and inspired by his book Piecing Together the Past, it addresses a central challenge: how can archaeology move beyond material evidence to approach human experience?

Using examples of hunter-gatherer-fisher burials from prehistoric Europe, the lecture examines how asking fundamental questions can help build interpretative frameworks for understanding death in the past. Focusing on the physical treatment of the body—including cremation, inhumation, manipulation, and mummification—this approach offers a way to situate death within lived experience and, in doing so, provides broader insights into prehistoric lifeways.

[This event took place on 15 May 2025] 

Gordon Childe Advanced Seminar 2025 (15 May) 

The seminar - a panel discussion as a response to the Gordon Childe Lecture - took place the following day.

Participants

The panel discussion with the speaker, Professor Liv Nilsson Stutz, was chaired by Andrew Reynolds (Professor of Medieval Archaeology, UCL Institute of Archaeology) and involved Carolyn Rando (Associate Professor in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology, UCL Institute of Archaeology), David Wengrow (Professor of Comparative Archaeology, UCL Institute of Archaeology), John Robb (Professor of European Prehistory, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge).