Michael Shanks (born 1959,

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne, or simply Newcastle ( , Received Pronunciation, RP: ), is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is England's northernmost metropolitan borough, located o ...

) is a British

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

specialising in classical archaeology and archaeological theory. He received his BA, MA and PhD from

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, and was a lecturer at the University of Wales, Lampeter before moving to the U.S. in 1999 to take up a Chair in

Classics Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Education

Shanks graduated from the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne and went on to study at Peterhouse, Cambridge, earning a BA in 1980. After finishing his studies he went on to get a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate of Education) from

Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...

in 1982. He earned a PhD from Cambridge in 1992. Shanks went on to earn a docentur (Higher Doctorate and license to teach) from the Institute of Archaeology in

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

in 1997.

Career

Shanks started his teaching career in 1983 at the Whitley Bay High School where he taught

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

and

Ancient history Ancient history is a time period from the History of writing, beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian language, ...

. He worked in the school until 1988. In 1991 he was a Research Fellow at the ''Centre d'Archéologie Classique, Paris 1 ( Sorbonne University), Maison des Sciences de l'Homme'' and the following year a teaching fellow at the University of Wales Lampeter. He stayed at the University until 1998 first as a lecturer in Archaeology and then as the Head of Department from 1996 to 1998. After this he went to

where he is a Professor of

. At Stanford he was also the Director of the Stanford Humanities Lab. He was also a visiting professor at the University College Dublin and

from 2010 to 2013. In 2013 he was made a Research Fellow at Durham University. He was a board member at the Palo Alto History Museum and served on the advisory board of the Humanities Institute of Ireland. For his work he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Roskilde University. He currently teaches courses at Stanford University focussing on the intersection of archeological thought and modern design thinking methods.

Writing

Over the years Shanks has written over 50 papers on classical archaeology, archaeological theory and media archaeology. He has published over a dozen books on these topics as well including ''Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology'' (1992), ''Classical Archaeology of Greece'' (1996), ''Art and the Greek City State: An Interpretive Archaeology'' (1999), ''The Archaeological Imagination'' (2012), ''A walk in time along the Smith River: a small work of theatre/archaeology'' (2016) and many others. He co-authored the 1995 book ''Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past'' with Ian Hodder and, more recently, ''Archaeology: The Discipline of Things'' (2012), a foundational text for symmetrical archaeology, with Bjørnar Olsen and Christopher Witmore.

Personal life

Michael Shanks lives in Northern California with his two children and his wife, Helen Shanks, a ceramic artist and former head of visual and performing arts at Castilleja School in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

References

External links

*
Michael Shanks' Stanford homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shanks, Michael 1959 births Living people Date of birth missing (living people) English archaeologists English expatriates in the United States Stanford University Department of Classics faculty Scientists from Newcastle upon Tyne Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge Academics of the University of Wales, Lampeter Alumni of Durham University Graduate Society