Catherine Mary Hills is a British archaeologist and academic, who is a leading expert in

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

material culture Material culture is culture manifested by the Artifact (archaeology), physical objects and architecture of a society. The term is primarily used in archaeology and anthropology, but is also of interest to sociology, geography and history. The fie ...

. She is a senior research fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.

Education

In the 1960s, Hill excavated with Philip Rahtz at Beckery chapel,

Glastonbury Glastonbury ( , ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbury is less than across the River ...

Career

She was appointed as a lecturer in Cambridge in 1977 in the Department of Archaeology. Previous to that she was a Field Officer for Norfolk Archaeological Unit. Hills was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1978. She was a Fellow of

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...

. Hills was closely associated with the excavation of the early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elmham, Norfolk, where she directed excavations from 1974 until the completion of excavations in 1981. Hills' post-excavation analyses of this major site led to substantial contributions in the fields of early Anglo-Saxon archaeology, particularly regarding burial and migration, and more recently the chronology of the 5th century. She presented the Channel 4 series ''The Blood of the British.'' She was Vice-President of the

Society for Medieval Archaeology The Society for Medieval Archaeology was founded in 1957. Its purpose was to publish a journal on medieval archaeology and organise conferences and events around the subject. It was the third archaeological society founded with a focus on a particul ...

from 2017-2022.

Selected publications

* Hills, C. (1979). The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England in the pagan period: A review. ''

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman Empire, Roman imperial rule in Roman Britain, Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the ...

,'' ''8'', 297-329. * Hills C.M. (1986). ''The Blood of the British''. London: George Philip * Hills C.M. (2003). ''Origins of the English''. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd. * Hills, C. (2007). History and archaeology: The state of play in early medieval Europe. '' Antiquity'' 81(311), 191-200. * Hills, C. (2011) Overview: Anglo-Saxon Identity. ''The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology''. Oxford: OUP. * Hills C. and Lucy S. (2013). ''Spong Hill Part IX. Chronology and Synthesis''. Cambridge: McDonald Inst of Archaeological Research.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hills, Catherine Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British women archaeologists British archaeologists Academics of the University of Cambridge Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge Anglo-Saxon archaeologists