Course description

How did people in pre-modern societies live together? How did culture develop in prehistoric and ancient civilisations? How do people use their natural environment and how does the environment and climate in turn shape people? How did crises, conflict and wars influence people back then? How did pre-industrial economic systems work in comparison to today?

During your archaeology degree, you will learn how to answer these and similar questions in fieldwork projects by recording, examining and interpreting archaeological finds and evidence and also by critically analysing academic publications.
There are five specialist fields in Cologne: Prehistoric Archaeology, Classical Archaeology, Archaeology of the Roman Provinces, Egyptology and Digital and Computational Archaeology. You thus have the opportunity to study the past from the beginning of human development, the first settled rural cultures (Stone Age), Bronze Age and Iron Age though to the Egyptian and classical cultures of the Mediterranean region and the Roman provinces. Special features at a national level are the Institute for African Studies and the Chair of Digital and Computational Archaeology.
Key areas of focus include landscape and settlement archaeology, the interaction between environmental, human and economic archaeology, the history of architecture and research into image media and antique art and their impact on the modern world.
Several laboratories focussing on natural science archaeology (e.g. archaeobotany and dendroarchaeology), an archaeological geophysics working group and the Cologne Digital Archaeology Lab within the area of Digital and Computational Archaeology support the research projects.