Professor Matthew Johnson

Matthew Johnson works on the archaeology of the British Isles in its Northern Atlantic and European context. He has written six books on a range of themes, including castles, traditional houses, landscape, and an archaeology of capitalism. His best known book is Archaeological Theory: An Introduction, and the revised third edition appeared in 2019. He has also written more widely on interdisciplinary and interpretive approaches, understanding medieval and historical archaeology, and archaeology in its cultural context.

About the event

I am writing a ‘big picture’ book on the archaeology of the English in the northern Atlantic. One of the key issues is this: how were the cultural ideas and practices of the English Middle Ages – what James Deetz called ‘a precious cargo’ – translated to the American colonies? It is useful or appropriate to think about patterns of settlement in New England, the Chesapeake, and the Carolinas in terms of medieval antecedents, alongside Native American, African and other European elements?

I will look at aspects of buildings and landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic, and think about deeper issues of cultural identity, interaction and long-term change involved in the movement of people.