Archaeology and History

Archaeology and history together offer two complementary ways of understanding the human past. History works primarily through written sources, asking how documents, records, and narrative accounts can be used to reconstruct and interpret past events and societies. Archaeology approaches the past through physical evidence: the objects people made and used, the buildings they constructed, the landscapes they modified, and the sites where they lived, worked, and buried their dead.

The two disciplines share a commitment to rigorous evidence-based enquiry while bringing very different methods and questions to the study of the past, and combining them gives you a richer and more complete understanding of human experience across time.

At Cardiff University, this three-year full-time programme immerses you in the study of past societies from the tiny personal objects worn on the body through to monumental complexes and twentieth-century propaganda materials. You will develop skills in primary source analysis, historical argument, and archaeological interpretation, learning to move between the close reading of individual documents and artefacts and the larger questions about what they reveal about the societies that produced them. Cardiff's location in Wales gives the programme direct access to some of the most significant archaeological and historical sites in Britain, and the department has strong research traditions in both disciplines.

A typical entry tariff of 136 points reflects a solid but accessible entry standard. Graduates of combined archaeology and history programmes work in heritage management, museums and archives, education, the civil service, journalism, and a wide range of analytical and public-facing roles. The research, interpretive, and communication skills the degree develops are genuinely transferable, and postgraduate study in archaeology, history, heritage management, or archival studies is a well-established route for those who wish to develop specialist expertise.