Staff Profiles

Following my first (archaeology) degree I travelled extensively in the Middle East and Asia, before returning to England to participate in excavations on Roman sites in the capital.  This coincided fortuitously with the 'Big Bang' development of the City of London when many important areas became temporarily open to archaeologists.  I was lucky enough to get to work on both the Huggin Hill Baths and the Forum site at Threadneedle Street.  This work was part of what has been for me a very happy association with the archaeologists and curators of the Museum of London, which also included time in that Museum's Medieval Department and work on the curatorial team of its Post-Medieval Department.  My wish however was to return to academia to pursue my interests in the Ancient World, so after a period of leave which included very nearly getting lost in Amazonia, I returned to university.  I received my doctorate in Roman archaeology from Oxford University in 1994, and then lectured there for a year while also working as a field archaeologist for Oxford Archaeology.  Thereafter I moved to Birkbeck College, University of London as Lecturer in Archaeology (October 1995).  In between the two appointments I was fortunate to travel the Silk Road between Pakistan and Xian in China.  After a relatively short period at Birkbeck I became Director of the college's rapidly developing Archaeology and History programme. I became a full Professor when I was awarded the Chair of Archaeology at Newcastle University in 2007.  Since then I have served in various roles within the University, including Director of Research for the School of Historical Studies and Head of Archaeology.  I direct, with Professor Peter Stone, the University's Frontiers of the Roman Empire Digital Humanities Initiative (https://research.ncl.ac.uk/fredhi/ ) and lead NU Digital Heritage (http://www.nu-digitalheritage.com/).  My research interests and projects are summarised under the Research Tab (see above)

Appointments/Honours

Chair, Clayton Trust for Roman Antiquities (2018-); AHRC Peer Review College Reviewer (2017-),  Visiting Fellow, Peterhouse College, Cambridge (Easter 2017); Visiting Scholar, McDonald Institute Cambridge (2017); PI Research Project of the Year, Current Archaeology Awards (2015); Research Quality Reviewer University College Cork (2015); Fellow, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (elected 2013); Director/Trustee, Vindolanda Trust (2012-); External Examiner, Glasgow University (2011-2014); Council, Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle Upon Tyne (2010-present); External Examiner, University of Oxford (2008-2011); Trustee, Clayton Collection, Chesters (2009-); Member, Maryport Research Committee (2009-); Member, Hadrian’s Wall Management Committee Steering Group (2007-2015); Fellow, Society of Antiquaries of London (elected 2003); Panel of Lecturers, Roman Society (2000-Present); Chair, Archaeology Committee of the Roman Society (2000-2004); External Examiner, University of Leicester (2003-2006); External Assessor, University of Surrey (1998-2001); Council Member, Standing Conference on London Archaeology Committee (2000-2003)

Reviewer for Major International Awards Organisations

Austrian Science Fund (FWF (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung); Research Foundation - Flanders (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlaanderen, FWO); Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (De Nederlandse Organisatie voor WetenschappelijkNWO); Committee for Research and Exploration, National Geographic Society.

Examination of PhDs

King’s College, University of London, University of St Andrews; Trinity College, Dublin; University College London; Royal Holloway College, University of Cambridge; University of London; University of Glasgow; University of Oxford; University of Southampton; University of Leicester; Leiden University, Netherlands; University of Liverpool; University of Auckland, NZ.

My research examines three key strands in the study of the Roman Empire: cult practice, the impact of frontiers and fortifications on communities, and the ways in which material culture illuminates communication and exchange.  Methodologically, I drive developments in advanced survey, geophysical analysis, next-generation excavation techniques and digital imaging. Geographically, my interest stretches across and beyond the Empire, as it draws upon still wider engagement with classical ideas and aesthetics and includes—most recently—work on Gandharan art and architecture.  My fieldwork currently focusses on Italy, Britain, and Romania.

My ERC Advanced Grant-funded ‘Rome Transformed: interdisciplinary analysis of political, military and religious regenerations of the city’s forgotten quarter C1-C8 CE’ (https://research.ncl.ac.uk/rometrans/ ) is my largest current research project.  My interest is the repeated, physical reshaping which was integral to successive regenerations of the city from a much earlier date, and which continued much later.  ‘Rome Transformed’ focusses on the reconfiguration of built space in the eastern Caelian, which is key to exploring the evolution of imperial and early papal Rome.  Our research team is based at Newcastle, Università degli Studi di Firenze, the British School at Rome (BSR) and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). In Rome the project works closely with the Musei Vaticani, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, and the Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio Di Roma.

‘Rome Transformed’ has three objectives: first, it determines the appearance of the built landscape associated with these changes, producing academically robust 3D visualisations, appropriately contextualised. The sources and arguments for each 3D digital model are rendered transparent and accessible through RT SCIEDOC, a powerful database system developed by the project in association with Technische Universität Darmstadt to address key concerns raised in the London Charter for the computer-based visualisation of Cultural Heritage.  Because each visualisation model serves in turn as a catalyst for debate and enquiry, the project terms them ‘provocations’, crucially emphasising that they are open to enhanced iterations.  Second, ‘Rome Transformed’ brings these elements together to model successive transformations that saw the Eastern Caelian reshaped to meet the needs of shifting political, military, and religious ideas. Third, it provides a longer-term interdisciplinary perspective on the changing shape of this pivotal area than any previously attempted.

The project is already producing substantial results, building on developments from two of my earlier projects located at the western end of the study area, the Lateran Project, and the BSR-funded San Giovanni in Laterano 2 project. Co-directed with Paolo Liverani of Università degli Studi di Firenze, the former project focussed on the archaeology of and beneath the Lateran Archbasilica, the latter on five archaeological areas within the modern Ospedale S. Giovanni in Addolorata. At each site, project members documented substantial areas ranging from the C1 CE onwards.  In 2022 we will publish the full technical report on the archaeology beneath the Archbasilica, though we have already published summaries of key discoveries in PBSR and the 2020 CUP volume I co-edited on The Basilica of St John Lateran.

Lessons learnt in Rome have proven invaluable in the honing scanning and imaging methods I would like to pursue in another area. I am launching a digital humanities initiative entitled ‘De-fragmenting Gandhara.’  Gandhara art has notoriously suffered at the hands of indiscriminate collectors over the years, leading to both the breaking up of pieces and the routine separation of sculpted pieces from their architectural context.  Combining the scanning, photography, and modelling of existing elements, with advanced visualisations / ‘provocations’ of their original settings, I aim to foster an advanced understanding not only of early Buddhist practice, but also its interplay with Greco-Roman art and architecture. Work with Wannaporn Kay Reinjang (Thammassat University, Thailand), Iwan Peverett (Newcastle University), and Luca M. Olivieri (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia) on the site of Saidu Sharif I (Pakistan) is my first foray into this integrated approach.

In Britain, my work focusses on the study of frontier communities, a theme I have previously explored on the Rhine and the Danube.  Here, my single biggest commitment takes the form of co-direction—with Tony Wilmott of Historic England—of the Birdoswald Excavation Project.  Birdoswald has long played a fundamental role in the study of Hadrian’s Wall.  Observations at the site have repeatedly led to step changes in our understanding of both the Wall’s role within the frontier system and in the changing character of life and society in the frontier zone.  Our five-year project (two seasons of which have now been completed), complements and expands upon earlier research at the site, including Tony’s exceptionally thorough excavations inside the fort, and the 2009 investigation of the site’s cemetery, in which I participated as leader of the Newcastle Team.  It is increasingly clear that it is only through a holistic understanding of forts and their extra-mural settlements that we can hope to advance our understanding of frontier communities.  Looking at such sites as towns and engaging not only with the study of military personnel but also with the wider range of people and activities associated with them is essential.  Here new approaches to the archaeology of gender and ethnicity have proven especially stimulating.  Our fieldwork has graphically demonstrated the limitations of traditional views of forts as areas exclusively occupied by soldiers, and extra-mural areas (sometimes unhelpfully termed ‘military vici’) as the preserve of civilians, and is, furthermore, demonstrating just how diverse the populations of these frontier towns were.  The Birdoswald Excavation Project also provides a community outreach programme and a next-generation field school, ensuring that all undergraduate attendees receive training in born-digital recording systems, and that graduate students can further augment this training with specialist formation in a range of fields, from geophysics to environmental archaeology.  Work at Birdoswald marks my second major collaboration with Tony Wilmott, the first being the highly successful five-year programme of excavation at a major frontier cult site at Maryport, Cumbria, which led to a fundamental reappraisal of the celebrated Maryport altar finds, demonstrating amongst other revelations that their deposit was not itself, as widely believed, a cult act (Haynes and Wilmott 2020).

The excavation projects above are complemented by a series of discrete projects, conducted by specialist teams, that apply largely non-intrusive methodologies.  In these projects, I employ magnetometry, resistivity, ground penetrating radar, LiDAR survey, Structure from Motion Imaging, and the use of infra-red aerial photographic survey to transform our understanding of key sites in the frontier zone.  These non-intrusive research programmes include my direction of the Corbridge Roman Station and Environs Project, Northumberland, and supervision of an extensive, ongoing geophysical survey at Beckfoot, Cumbria.  Though both projects originated prior to my participation with the international Cultural Heritage Through Time (2) research programme, they have also benefitted from this AHRC-funded activity.  It is a source of great pleasure to see how the results of the overall surveys have contributed to research into the frontier (Corbridge: Haynes et al. 2019, Beckfoot: Haynes et al. 2019).  I am now taking analysis of each site further through a series of collaborative ventures, variously examining the extraordinarily rich data we have recovered for industrial activity at Corbridge, and (with Jon Mills, Professor of Geospatial Engineering, and our Iapetus/NERC-funded doctoral student Lesley Davidson), the importance of this data to study the impact of environmental change (coastal and riverine erosion) and agricultural practice on heritage sites. Engagement in the impact of environmental change also runs through my contribution to ongoing work at Carvoran, where there have been long-standing concerns about the impact of de-watering on what are probably the richest anaerobic deposits to be associated with any Roman site in the frontier zone. Most recently, Dr Lisa-Marie Shillito and I have received a university grant to date cores extracted from these deposits extracted this summer in our collaborative work with the Vindolanda Trust and the University of Teesside. 

As with my work on material from Italy and Pakistan, I see the appropriate application of Digital Humanities Technologies as integral to advancing understanding of the lives of frontier communities.  This has been a theme in my co-Direction of FREDHI (Frontiers of the Roman Empire Digital Humanities Initiative (https://research.ncl.ac.uk/fredhi )) and its outputs, together with my service as Chair of the Clayton Collection of Roman Antiquities, where I have contributed to research visualisations of the Coventina’s Well shrine on Hadrian’s Wall as part of the Collection’s soon to be launched Digital Museum.  It takes its most intense form in my collaboration with Lindsay Allason-Jones on my British Academy-funded project ‘Analysing Britain’s Most Elusive Sculptures’, which analyses over 550 fragments of Romano-British sculpture from the hinterland of Hadrian’s Wall, including 65 pieces whose remote, inaccessible location or poor condition has previously prevented detailed scholarly examination.  The innovative use of Structure from Motion Photography and white light scanning has allowed a far more advanced appraisal of these fragments than would otherwise have been possible, and crucially the identification of images hidden to the naked eye.  The project will lead to the production of the final British volume of Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani (CSIR), however, I believe that its significance will be still greater, because the application of new methodologies shows how much more information could potentially be recovered from other sculptured elements – both those recorded in other volumes of the international CSIR series and those yet to be documented.

Finally, I should note my long-standing and important relationship with the archaeology of Romania.  This academic year I hope we will be able to submit the final report on my work at Apulum, (Alba Iulia, Romania), conducted with—amongst others—Alexandru Diaconescu and colleagues from the Universitatea Babeş Bolyai, Cluj, Romania, and Alfred Schäfer and colleagues from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. The Apulum Project focussed primarily on the excavation of a sanctuary of Liber Pater within the Roman city of colonia Aurelia Apulensis and opened a remarkable set of opportunities.  Discovery of cult pits provided a powerful insight into the nature of rituals practiced at a relatively modest shrine set within a part of the city largely dominated by pottery production.  We were able to record deposits with a precision unprecedented in the wider region, simultaneously enriching our understanding of Bacchic cult in the wider empire.