Sussex Archaeology and History Ltd
Lectures, Conferences, Courses and Study Tours in Sussex and beyond
ONLINE ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE SERIES
Our online archaeology lecture series (previously USAS) runs from September 2025 through to March 2026
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Our annual subscription for 2025/2026 is just £18, which will entitle you to receive a link to the recordings of the lectures (provided we have the permission of the speakers). In addition, subscribers will this year also have access to the online lectures being organised by the Roman Studies Group of the Surrey Archaeological Society, and hopefully too some online lectures of the local National Trust Changing Chalk Project. There will also be discounted entry to our conferences and study days.
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Please contact us if you are interested admin@sussexarchaeology.co.uk
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Details of our online archaeology lectures for 2025/2026
Wednesday 15th October 2025
SAH Online Archaeology Lecture
7.30pm
Selsey, Lewes and the Early Medieval Kingdoms of Sussex
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Speaker: Dr Michael Shapland
c1500 view of Selsey_Lambert Barnard Chichester Cathedral
Early medieval Sussex was a place of many kingdoms, a mosaic of folk territories of probable prehistoric origin. This talk will survey new research that is beginning to reveal more about these kingdoms, their names, cultural identities, where they lay, their places of power and assembly, even the burial places of their kings. The westernmost of these kingdoms, centred on the Selsey Peninsula near Chichester, appears to have been culturally British and already Christianised long before its supposed conversion by St Wilfred in the late 7th century. Another kingdom lay to the east, around Ditchling, with its cult focus at Lewes. This was a time when old gods were making way for new and ancient identities were amalgamating into something that for the first time becomes recognisable as Sussex, a process which we are only now beginning to understand.
King Aelle_John_Speed
About the speaker:
Dr Michael Shapland, FSA (Archaeology South-East)
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Michael is an archaeologist who specialises in early medieval buildings and landscapes. He has fifteen years’ experience in the professional sector, the last twelve with UCL’s Archaeology South-East. He also serves as the consultant archaeologist for Chichester Cathedral. His doctorate was on Anglo-Saxon towers and the development of early castles, he formerly lectured on early medieval kingship at the University of Winchester, and he has authored or co-authored numerous academic articles and several books.
Wednesday 19th November 2025
SAH Online Archaeology Lecture
7.30pm
THE SALLY CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE 2025
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Monuments in Action: the ‘Medway megaliths’ and the making of new worlds
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Speaker: Paul Garwood BA, MSc
(University of Birmingham)
The unique group of megalithic monuments in the Medway valley in Kent includes some of the earliest built structures with surviving architectural features in the British Isles. Surprisingly, despite frequent mention in antiquarian and archaeological literature since the 16th century, these extraordinary sites have been subject to little investigation, and most recent interpretations simply relied on analogies with Severn-Cotswold tombs in western Britain. It is now clear, however, especially as a result of High Speed 1 fieldwork, new analyses of the Coldrum human remains, and new evidence generated by the Medway Valley Prehistoric Landscapes Project, that these interpretations are no longer tenable. This talk will redefine the ‘Medway megaliths’, their cultural landscape settings from the 41st to the 35th century BC, and their roles in the creation of the first farming societies in Britain.
Coldrum
About the speaker:
Paul Garwood BA, MSc (University of Birmingham)
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Paul Garwood is Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Birmingham, specialising in European Neolithic and Bronze Age studies and funerary archaeology. His career spans both the commercial and academic sectors, including 20 years as a field archaeologist and consultant working for organisations such as the Museum of London, College Lecturer in Archaeology & Anthropology at Keble College and University Lecturer at Oxford, before appointment as Lecturer in Prehistory at Birmingham. His recent publication projects include surveys of the earlier prehistory of High Speed 1 and South-East England, and he is director of several field projects, including Medway Valley Prehistoric Landscapes and Stonehenge Landscapes EMI.
About Sally Christian
Sally developed a passion for archaeology as a mature student at the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) at the University of Sussex. Before her death, due to cancer, whilst still studying at CCE, Sally very generously established at Sussex University a Fund to help finance similar part-time older students, and also sixth-formers wishing to experience some archaeology before applying to university, to undertake practical archaeology training courses. Following the demise of CCE, the remainder of the Sally Christian Archaeology Bequest was transferred for administrative purposes to the Sussex Archaeological Society.
To remember Sally, Sussex Archaeology and History (SAH) holds an annual memorial lecture.
Wednesday 21st January 2026
SAH Online Archaeology Lecture
7.30pm
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Rural Baths in Roman Britain:
A Colonisation of the Senses
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Speaker: Dr Giacomo Savani
(University of Leeds)
Classical archaeology is currently experiencing a spatial and sensory turn, with scholars trying to interpret the range of sensory experiences connected to ancient practices and spaces. Compared to other structures, baths, an essential component of the 'Roman way of life', have so far received comparatively little attention. In this paper, I will explore the potential of applying a sensory approach to the study of rural baths in a precise geographical and chronological context: South-East England in the century or so after the Roman conquest.
As Yannis Hamilakis recently demonstrated, the senses are deeply connected with memory and feelings. Once new feelings become familiar and our sensorium is enlarged, this provokes a slow but steady modification in our perception of self and others. This phenomenon could be labelled a 'colonisation of the senses', a fascinating concept that has never been adequately explored in the literature. In some rural areas of South-East England, the bathing ritual might have acted as a bridgehead for this process.
This talk will discuss the nature of this exchange, investigating the role that bathing practices and the sensory elements associated with them had in constructing a 'middle ground' in the newly conquered province. Furthermore, by reading these buildings as 'sensorial assemblages', I assess their shifting function within the increased elite competition that characterised this early transitional phase. Instead of viewing rural baths as merely a prerogative of the elite, I will suggest that some of them might have been accessible to at least a part of the rural population living in the surroundings of villas, potentially influencing and affecting the lives and identities of a far larger group of people than previously thought.
About the speaker:
Giacomo Savani (University of Leeds)
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Dr Giacomo Savani is a Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Leeds. His research explores the spread and adoption of Roman culture across different spaces and times, focusing on Roman material culture – especially baths and bathing – as a vector and an expression of political, social, and cultural relations. Before starting at Leeds in September 2024, he completed his PhD in Roman Archaeology at the University of Leicester in 2017. Subsequently, he held an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship in the School of Classics, University College Dublin (2019–2022), a Royal Society of Edinburgh Saltire Early Career Fellowship in the School of Classics, University of St Andrews (2022–2023), and a Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the School of History, Ca'Foscari University of Venice (2024).
Wednesday 24th September 2025
SAH Online Archaeology Lecture
Was Pevensey Castle the site of the Norman base in 1066? Revisiting the problem of ‘Hestenga ceastra’
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Speakers: Dr Rebecca Welshman and Simon Coleman
Following the recent identification of ‘Heathfield Down’, near Heathfield, in East Sussex as a possible location for the battlefield of Hastings, 1066 (Welshman and Coleman, 2024), this paper revisits the pioneering work of Pamela Combes and Malcolm Lyne (1995), which identified Pevensey, rather than Hastings, as the more probable site of the burh of Haestingaceaster, listed in the 9th-century Burghal Hideage.
The place named ‘Hestenga ceastra’ in the Bayeux Tapestry – the site of the Normans fortified base before the battle - is generally assumed to have been located within modern Hastings. However, a closer examination of Combes and Lyne’s theory may suggest that Hestenga ceastra referred instead to the town and port of Pevensey. We consider the evidence in favour of Pevensey, with its Roman fortress or ‘ceaster’, as the 9th-century burh and the lack of relevant Saxon-era archaeological evidence from Hastings. We then analyse the military options open to the Normans after their landing, comparing the suitability of Pevensey and Hastings as fortified bases in the build-up to the battle. With reference to the topography and ancient routes in the area, we reappraise the crucial question of the location of Hestenga ceastra.
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Works cited
Combes, Pamela, and Malcolm Lyne. “Hastings, Haestingaceaster and Haestingaport: A question of identity.” Sussex Archaeological Collections 133 (1995), 213–224, doi.org/10.5284/1086680
Welshman, Rebecca, and Simon Coleman. “Heathfield Down: An Alternative Location for the Battlefield of Hastings, 1066”. International Journal of Military History and Historiography (published online ahead of print 2024). doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/24683302-bja10061
About the speakers:
Dr Rebecca Welshman and Simon Coleman
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Dr. Rebecca Welshman is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Liverpool. She works on projects concerning ‘the literary archaeology of place’ – the study of texts in the context of geography, history and environment. Her PhD (University of Exeter, 2010–13) titled ‘Imagining Archaeology’ focused on nature and landscape in 19th century literature. She has presented papers at the World Archaeological Congress, Archaeology in Conflict (Vienna, 2010), and ‘Theatres of War: The British Commission for Military History’s New Researchers’ Conference’ (Lancaster, 2019) where she presented a new interpretation of ‘The Hoar Apple Tree’ of the Battle of Hastings. She has published in historical, cultural, and literary studies. Her latest essay, which highlights military associations in the works of Shakespeare, will appear in Reading the River in Shakespeare’s Britain (2024).
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Mr. Simon Coleman obtained a BA degree in Ancient History and then qualified as an archivist. He has worked in various academic institutions, including the British Library and the universities of Bath and Sussex, and is now at West Dean College in West Sussex. His work has largely focused on archives from the 19th and 20th centuries covering subjects such as literature, art and political history. Outside work he has written articles for the Richard Jefferies Society. Before attending university, he developed an interest in medieval and ancient battles and investigated theories regarding the locations of some Anglo-Saxon battlefields. On moving to East Sussex in 2014 he started to explore the question of the site of the Battle of Hastings, looking at issues around interpretation of sources, landscape changes, and the influence of ‘official’ narratives of events on current debate.
Online Lecture Programme for 2025/2026
Wednesday 24 September 2025
Was Pevensey the Saxon Burh of Haestingaceastre, and the site of the Norman base in 1066?
Speakers: Dr Rebecca Welshman (University of Liverpool) and Simon Coleman (West Dean College)
Wednesday 15 October 2025
Selsey, Lewes and the Early Medieval Kingdoms of Sussex
Speaker: Dr Michael Shapland FSA (Archaeology South-East)
Wednesday 19 November 2025
The Sally Christian Archaeology Lecture 2025
The Medway Megaliths
Speaker: Paul Garwood BA, MSc (University of Birmingham)
Wednesday 21 January 2026
Rural Baths in Roman Britain: A Colonisation of the Senses
Speaker: Dr Giacomo Savani (University of Leeds)
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Wednesday 18 February 2026
The Biology of Books
Speaker: Dr Sean Doherty (University of Exeter)
Wednesday 18 March 2026
35 Years of World Heritage in the UK – Opportunities and Challenges
Speaker: Chris Blandford (President World Heritage UK)