Dr Caroline Pudney | University of Chester

Senior Lecturer in Archaeology

Caroline joined the academic team in 2014 moving from her role as Community Archaeologist for Cadw, The Welsh Government’s Historic Environment Service. She has a background in Iron Age and Roman archaeology, commercial archaeology, and public and community engagement (among other things). Caroline has experience communicating archaeology to the public through a range of media and is passionate about providing opportunities for people to get involved in, and inspired by, archaeology.

Caroline teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate levels in archaeology and heritage practice. She especially teaches on later Prehistoric and Roman archaeology, material culture (theory and practice), fieldwork and archaeological methods, as well as public archaeology and heritage.

Caroline is an active researcher and fieldwork archaeologist. She has worked on research projects involving Cadw, the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments Wales, Wrexham Museum, Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust, Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales, HMP & YOI Parc Bridgend, HMP Berwyn, and the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Details of some of her research can be on the Academia.edu and Researchgate.net websites.

For example, Caroline has been actively involved in excavations at the Roman legionary fortress in Caerleon, (Newport, Wales, UK) with Cardiff University, co-directed excavations in partnership with Cadw at Llanmelin Wood Camp, an Iron Age hillfort near Newport (Wales, UK) and the fossilised landscape at Hen Caerwys, Flintshire (Wales, UK), with Cadw and the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust.

Currently, Caroline is working a number of research projects. She is currently co-director of a project investigating Roman rural settlement in the lower Dee valley in partnership with Wrexham Museum, including the exciting discovery and excavation of North Wales’ first structurally attested Romano-British villa near Rossett, Wrexham. The project builds on the recent In the Footsteps of Trebellius Maximus project which investigated the archaeological context of the Rossett lead pig.

Caroline is co-leading the renewal of the Roman part of the Research Framework for the Archaeology of Wales with Dr David Roberts (Cardiff University). She is particularly keen to collaborate with partners seeking to understand the social benefits of archaeology and heritage, research human-object relationships in the later prehistoric and Roman world, as well as non-linear frontiers in Roman Britain.

Caroline is always open to supervising research students on any areas connected to her specialisms but would be particularly interested in proposals on:

Romano-British material culture

Wales, Cheshire and the Marches during the Iron Age and/or Roman period

Deposition in the Iron Age

Human-Animal Relationships in the Iron Age of Britain

Iron Age Coins and Imagery

Archaeology in formal and informal education (especially the New Curriculum for Wales)

Public Archaeology and Roman Britain in the 21st Century

Pudney, C. & Grenter, S. (2021) A Roman villa near Rossett. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 19, pp 187-193.

Pudney, C. (2019) Instrumentalised Public Archaeology: Cease and Desist? In, H. Williams, C. Pudney and A. Ezzeldin, Public Archaeology: Arts of Engagement. Oxford: Archaeopress Access Archaeology, pp109 -124.

Williams, H., Pudney,C. and Ezzeldin, A. (2019) Public Archaeology: Arts of Engagement. Oxford: Archaeopress Access Archaeology.

Pudney, C (2018) Coins and Cosmologies in Iron Age Western Britain. Cambridge Archaeological Journal [published online June 2018].

Pudney, C (2018) Socio-semiotics and the symbiosis of humans, horses, and objects in later Iron Age Britain. The Archaeological Journal [online] 1-25.

Pudney, C (2017) Translational Public Archaeology? Archaeology, social benefit, and working with offenders in Wales (Part 2), Public Archaeology. 16(2), 74-89

Pudney, C (2017) Romans and Reducing Recidivism: Archaeology, Social Benefit, and Working with Offenders in Wales (Part 1), Public Archaeology 16(1), 19-41

Guest, P., Luke M., and Pudney, C. (2012) Archaeological evaluation of the extramural monumental complex ('the Southern Canabae') at Caerleon, 2011. Project Report. Cardiff: Cardiff Studies in Archaeology 33. [Online]. Cardiff: Cardiff School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University.

Pudney, C. (2010) Pinning Down Identity: The Negotiation of Personhood and the Materialisation of Identity in the Late Iron Age and Early Roman Severn Estuary In: Mladenovic, D. and Russell, B. eds. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Oxford 2010. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 115-131.

Fellow of Higher Education Academy
PG Certificate in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education
PhD Archaeology. Cardiff University - Thesis: Environments of Change: Social identity and material culture in the Severn Estuary from the first century B.C. to the second century A.D.
MA Archaeology, Reading University
B.A. Hons. Ancient History and Archaeology, Cardiff University