Undergraduate: archaeology – core and option modules, seminars and projects.

2010-2011:

Year 1 - Exploring Our Past, Going Beyond the Glass Case – an introduction to museums

Year 2/3 - Interpreting Past Landscapes, Killing Fields: the archaeology of conflict. Seminar: Weird Archaeologies

Postgraduate:

• MA in Conflict Archaeology

• Heritage and its management
• Socio-politics of the past
• Phenomenology of landscapes
• Conflict Archaeology
• Battlefield archaeology
• Archaeological approaches to warfare and violence

My overall interest is in the role in the present of material remains from the past. This involves a concern with the ideological aspects of what we call ‘heritage’ and the institutions – organisational, legal, structural – that we set up to manage it. I am interested in what kinds of object we allocate to the category ‘heritage’ and how we do it, and how aspects of heritage management relate to the theory and practice of archaeology as a research discipline into the past. I have a particular interest in how issues of ownership impinge upon and condition our attitudes towards and expectations of the material heritage. All of this derives from an interest in understanding the various types of value we give to our material heritage – what those values are, and from where they derive. The category of heritage is a universal one – everybody can claim to have a heritage – but the specifics of what constitutes that heritage and how it is treated vary from place to place: so I am also interested in comparing heritage practices internationally.

A particularly interesting category of heritage is that of ‘landscape’ and especially those landscapes which carry special meanings for us in the present. One such landscape type which has become the concern of archaeologists and heritage professionals is the ‘historic battlefield’. These are the subject of research by the Bloody Meadows Project – a joint enterprise with Patricia Carman – which studies such places as landscapes. Our aim is to understand the attitudes to place brought by warriors in the past to the places where they carried out their violent activities, and to compare those places so sought in one period with those sought in other periods; this leads us to apply a broadly ‘phenomenological’ approach to their investigation. A related concern – and one linked with the interest in heritage value – is with the way such places are remembered or memorialised. This work was the subject of a book published by Suttons in 2006, Bloody Meadows: investigating cultural landscapes of battle.

John discusses his research into cultural heritage and battlefield archaeology

• Transcript

Co-Director (with P. Carman), Bloody Meadows Project 1998 - present

Convenor, ESTOC: European Studies of Terrains Of Conflict 2007 - present

Membership of Advisory and Editorial Boards:

• Oudenaarde 1708 commemoration and Casus Belli project, Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Interpretation, Belgium 2006 - present
• The Value of Shakespeare research project, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford Upon Avon, UK 2006-present
• International Journal of Heritage Studies 2006 - present
• Conferences organised by the Greenlines Institute for Sustainable Development, Portugal 2006 – present
• Heritage Values Group, Society for American Archaeology 2008 - present
• Hermes. Resvista de Museografía didáctica, Spain 2008-present
• Community Archaeology Research Institute (CARI), Houston, Texas, USA 2008 – present
• Heritage Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 2009 – present
• Conflict and Security Studies Network, University of Birmingham 2009 – present
• The Historic Environment: policy and practice journal, 2009 - present
• International Liaison Chair, Society for Historical Archaeology annual conference, Austin TX, USA 2011

Current projects:

• Bloody Meadows: historic battlefields in comparative perspective (co-Director with Patricia Carman)
• ESTOC: pan-European collaboration in studying sites of past conflict

Authored books

• Against Cultural Property: archaeology, heritage and ownership, Duckworth Debates in Archaeology, 2005, ISBN 0-7156-3402-X
• Archaeology and Heritage: an introduction, London, Continuum Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8264-5894-7 (hcover), 0-8264-5895-5 (pbk)
• Valuing Ancient Things: archaeology and law  Leicester University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-7185-0012-1

Co-authored book

• J. Carman & P. Carman Bloody Meadows: investigating cultural landscapes of battle, Sutton Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0-7509-3734-3

Edited book

• Material Harm: archaeological studies of war and violence, Cruithne Press, 1997, ISBN 1-873448-10-4

Co-edited book

• M.L.S. Sørensen & J. Carman (eds) Heritage Studies: methods and approaches, Routledge, 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-43184-2 / 978-0-415-43185-9
• R.H. White & J. Carman (eds) World Heritage: global challenges, local solutions. Proceedings of a conference at the Ironbridge Institute, May 2006. Oxford, Archaeopress, BAR 1698, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4073-0140-2
• J. Carman and A. F. Harding (eds) Ancient Warfare: archaeological perspectives, Stroud, Sutton Publishers, 1999, ISBN 0-7509-1795-4
• I. Hodder, M. Shanks, A. Alexandri, V. Buchli, J. Carman, J. Last, and G. Lucas (eds) Interpreting Archaeology: finding meaning in the past  Routledge, 1995, ISBN 0-415-07330-8
• M. A. Cooper, A. Firth, J. Carman and D. Wheatley (eds) Managing Archaeology, Routledge, 1995, ISBN 0-415-10674-5