Newcastle University

Our degrees are divided into Stages. Each Stage lasts for an academic year and you need to complete modules totalling 120 credits by the end of each Stage.

Please be aware that programme modules do change and therefore may differ for your year of entry.

Stage 1

Compulsory modules

• ARA1027 Introduction to Archaeology
• ARA1030 The Archaeology of Britain from the Romans to the Twentieth Century
• HIS1029 Varieties of History
• HIS1030 Evidence and Argument

Optional modules

You choose a module from either History or Archaeology below.

History modules

• HIS1025 World Empires
• HIS1027 European History
• HIS1044 Aspects of British History
• HIS1046 The History of the Americas

Archaeology modules

• ARA1026 Introduction to Archaeological Science
• ARA1028 Prehistoric Britain
• ARA1001 Stuff: Living in a Material World

You also choose one further module. We recommend the following:

• SOC1027 Comparing Cultures

Fieldwork

At the end of Stage 1 you complete at least two weeks of excavation fieldwork.

Stage 2

Compulsory modules

You take the following module:

• ARA2012 Fieldwork and Archaeological Practice

Plus one of the following:

• ARA2097 Historical Archaeology of the Modern World (Post-1492)
  
• ARA2098 Understanding Historic Landscapes: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-first Century

Optional modules

You choose two modules from History and two further modules from either History or Archaeology. 

History modules

• HIS2001 Spain, 1808-1975: War, Society and State
• HIS2002 Fatal Allies: Anglo-Irish Relations, 1798-1998
• HIS2003 Stage 2 British History Module
• HIS2004 Early Modern Print Culture
• HIS2012 Clash of the Civilisations: Islam, the Crusades and the Mongol Invasions
• HIS2026 Japan since 1868
• HIS2055 The Later Russian Empire, 1796-1917
• HIS2072 Anglo-Saxon England
• HIS2077 Russia under Lenin and Stalin, 1917-1953
• HIS2078 History of Medicine
• HIS2085 Pre-Columbian and Spanish America
• HIS2086 Twentieth-century France, 1914-1995
• HIS2087 A Civilian's War: The Second World War, 1939-1945
• HIS2103 The Dark Ages: Early Medieval Europe and its Neighbours 500-900
• HIS2114 Death, Dying and the Dead in Early Modern England, 1500-1800
• HIS2123 Family, Sex and Society
• HIS2124 A History of Contemporary Britain
• HIS2126 The Difficult Fatherland: Germany's Past
• HIS2128 Modern Greece
• HIS2131 American Slavery, American Freedom: Black and White America in the Age of Revolutions, 1776-1876
• HIS2132 The Criminal Atlantic in the Long Eighteenth Century: Pirates, Convicts and Rebels (Semester 1)
• HIS2232 The Criminal Atlantic in the Long Eighteenth Century: Pirates, Convicts and Rebels (Semester 2)
• HIS2138 China's Last Empire
• LAS2030 Comparative History of Hispano-America and Brazil: from Independence to the Mexican Revolution (1789/1810-1917)

Archaeology modules

• ARA2001  Archaeological Theory and Interpretation
• ARA2011  Later European Prehistory
• ARA2091  Archaeologies of the Roman Empire: the Roman World from Augustus to Justinian 
• ARA2101  Artefacts 
• ARA2097 Historical Archaeology of the Modern World (Post 1492)
• ARA2098 Understanding Historic Landscapes: from the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-first Century

Fieldwork

At the end of Stage 2 you complete a further two weeks of fieldwork.

Stage 3

Compulsory modules

You choose one of the following compulsory modules:

• ARA3001 Dissertation in Archaeology
• ARA3003 Dissertation in Archaeology and History

Optional modules 

You choose three or four modules from the lists below. You must select at least one module from each list. 

History modules

• HIS3030 History and Society
• HIS3035 Stage 3 British History Module
• HIS3131 China in Revolution, 1919-1976
• HIS3181 The American Civil War, 1861-1865
• HIS3204 The English Revolution, 1640-1660
• HIS3205 Fascism in Italy, 1914-1945
• HIS3206 The Irish Revolution, 1879-1923
• HIS3208 Coffee, Chocolate and Tobacco
• HIS3212 Reconstruction and the New South, 1865-1914
• HIS3213 Slave Emancipation in the British Empire
• HIS3218 Hogarth! The Artist and his Life in Georgian London, 1697-1764
• HIS3219 Living Together: Christians, Muslims and Jews in Medieval Iberia
• HIS3222 Jarrow Crusade
• HIS3229 The Spanish Second Republic and Civil War, 1931-1939
• HIS3240 Civil Rights in America, 1948-1975
• HIS3278 England 1714-1820: Birth of a Consumer Society
• HIS3279 Popular Politics and Reform in Britain, 1811-1850
• HIS3283 The Russian Revolution
• HIS3284 The Mexican Revolution
• HIS3286 Genocide
• HIS3289 Gorbachev (Semester 1)
• HIS3290 Gorbachev (Semester 2)
• HIS3326 Women in Colonial South Asia: Tradition, Reform and Modernity

Archaeology modules

• ARA3013 Early Medieval Britain
• ARA3016 Byzantium and its Neighbours
• ARA3031 Historical Archaeology of Britain, 1500-Present

If you took only three modules from the lists above, you may select one further module from the list below. 

• NCL3007 Career Development for Final-year Students
• ARA3022 Themes in European Prehistory (Cosmology, Bodies, Persons and Art)
• ARA3025 Social Prehistory of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain
• ARA3100 The Rise of the Middle Sea: an Archaeological Voyage Across the Prehistoric Mediterranean