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Staff Profiles

Dr Duncan Wright

Senior Lecturer in Medieval Archaeology

  • Email: duncan.wright@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: Room 2.25
    School of History, Classics and Archaeology
    Armstrong Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Duncan is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Archaeology and Degree Programme Director for Archaeology, within the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University. He studied undergraduate archaeology at the University of Exeter, and completed an MA in Medieval Archaeology at the University of York. Duncan then returned to Exeter to complete his PhD, and remained there as Research Fellow working on the Anarchy: War and Status in Twelfth-century Landscapes of Conflict project. He moved to Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, where he led the Archaeology and Heritage Programmes, before joining Newcastle.

Duncan is External Examiner for The University of Edinburgh and The University of Nottingham, and previously acted in the same capacity for The University of Sheffield, and for The University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, and Editor of Medieval Archaeology. 

Research

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Archaeologies of elite power

Early medieval environments

Landscape survey and excavation

Sacred landscapes and the early medieval Church

Early medieval craftspeople


CURRENT RESEARCH

Duncan specialises in medieval archaeology, and has a particular interest in material manifestations of elite power including those associated with the Church. He has published widely across a broadly-defined 'early medieval' period (c.400-1200), and is an active field archaeologist with an extensive background in landscape survey and excavation.

Duncan is the Principal Investigator (Co-I: Professor Oliver Creighton) of the AHRC Research Grant-funded project Where Power Lies: the archaeology of transforming elite centres in the landscape of medieval England c.AD800-1200. Beginning in November 2022, this scheme conducted the first ever systematic and integrated study of the physical evidence for early lordly centres in medieval England, reshaping our understanding of 'the rise of the gentry' and its impact upon the landscape. Published outputs from the project have appeared in The Antiquaries Journal, Early Medieval Europe, and Medieval Settlement Research, and identification of Harold Godwinson's lordly complex (and his toilet) attracted widespread coverage in the international press.

Where Power Lies was shortlisted for Current Archaeology's Research Project of the year for 2025 (under the name Bosham to Bayeux), and a co-authored (with Prof. Creighton) monograph Archaeologies of England’s Medieval Aristocracy c. AD 800–1200 is currently under contract with Bloomsbury. Duncan previously led a multi-stage proof of concept for the programme, funded by The Castle Studies Trust, at Laughton en le Morthen, South Yorkshire, where he demonstrated how Earl Edwin of Mercia's complex was reshaped into a motte and bailey castle following the Norman Conquest. A paper based on this research was published in the journal Landscapes.

In 2025 Duncan (as PI) was awarded two Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grants, providing access to the National Environmental Isotope Facility, for investigation of a burial population from a churchyard at Earls Barton, Northamptonshire. This work seeks to understand the context of several rock-cut burials, excavated in the late 1970s, which appear to be the earliest internments on the site and may precede construction of the famous tower-nave church. It is likely that these burials are associated with a previously-unidentified church or mausoleum, located via Ground Penetrating Radar by the Where Power Lies project. The programme of radiocarbon dating and isotope analyses supported by the grant will define when these individuals were interred and generate detailed migratory histories, providing a valuable insight into the biographies of Earls Barton's nascent aristocratic community.

Duncan is a Co-Lead (PL: Dr Patrick Gleeson) on the AHRC Research Grant-funded Ecologies of Governance project which is examining the emergence of inequality and the economic basis of rulership in early medieval, kin-based societies. The programme will undertake multi-proxy and comparative analyses of the environment and agrarian regimes of some of the major and iconic royal landscapes of first millennium AD Britain and Ireland.


PREVIOUS RESEARCH

Duncan has published widely on early medieval archaeology including a monograph based upon his PhD thesis, and two articles along similar themes in Medieval Archaeology and Landscapes. His paper exploring the roles and identities of early medieval metalworkers was published in 2019. Duncan co-authored a monograph on the twelfth-century civil war commonly known as the Anarchy with Professor Oliver Creighton (University of Exeter). He co-edited, also with Professor Creighton, an additional fieldwork volume from the same project and published various other outputs on similar themes. Duncan Co-Directed the Little Carlton Project with Dr Adam Daubney (Portable Antiquities Scheme) and Dr Hugh Willmott (University of Sheffield), which was shortlisted for Current Archaeology's Research Project of the Year in 2017. He was Director, again with Dr Willmott, of the Crowland Archaeology Project which between 2021-22 led excavations at Anchor Church Field. These investigations found a previously undiscovered prehistoric henge, reused in the Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods, and revealed a site that continued to be venerated into the nineteenth century. A paper summarising the evolution of this sacred landscape across millennia was published in The Journal of Field Archaeology.


POSTGRADUATE SUPERVISION

I currently supervise the following PhD students:

Cooper Clark 'Fully conceptualizing England's First Monastery: How might space have been used and understood at St Augustine's Abbey throughout the Anglo-Saxon period (c. 597-1073)?'

Rebecca Nashan 'Burials between the Ages. A new Model of Mortuary Assemblages and Chronology of the Upper Rhine, circa mid-4th – mid-5th century AD'


If you are considering studying for a postgraduate research degree in a topic related to any of my research interests, please contact me via email.

Teaching

I teach across Newcastle's undergraduate and postgraduate teaching curriculum. I am Module Lead of the Stage 1 module ARA1030 The Archaeology of Britain from the Romans to the 20th Century, the Stage 2 module ARA2020 Fieldwork and Post-excavation: Archaeology in the UK, and the Stage 3/MA module ARA3013 Early Medieval Britain.

Publications