History and Archaeology
History and archaeology together offer a powerful combination of approaches to understanding the human past. History examines the past through written sources, developing skills in the critical analysis of documents, the construction of narrative and argument, and the understanding of how people, ideas, and institutions have changed over time. Archaeology investigates the material traces that people leave behind, reading objects, structures, and landscapes as evidence of how past communities lived, organised themselves, and made sense of the world.
Together the two disciplines cover a far wider range of the human past than either can reach alone.
At the University of Winchester, this three-year full-time programme brings together historians and archaeologists who are passionate about past cultures and traditions across a broad chronological range, from the prehistoric to the modern period and across Britain, mainland Europe, and beyond. You will develop skills in archival research, textual analysis, and historical argument alongside training in excavation, artefact analysis, and the interpretation of material evidence. Winchester's location in a city with deep historical and archaeological significance gives the programme a distinctive character, with access to sites and collections that enrich your learning.
You will engage with questions about how we know what we know about the past, how different kinds of evidence are evaluated and combined, and what the past can tell us that matters for the present. The critical and analytical skills these questions develop are genuinely transferable.
Graduates go on to work in heritage management, museums, archives, education, local government, community history, cultural organisations, and research. Many continue to postgraduate study in history, archaeology, heritage management, or museum studies. Others apply the analytical and communication skills the degree develops in careers in law, journalism, the civil service, and a range of other sectors.