Chris Scarre

Christopher John Scarre is an academic and writer in the fields of archaeology, prehistory and ancient history. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Durham and was head of its archaeology department 2010–2013.

Education and personal life Scarre graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1976. He got a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1982 from the University of Cambridge for his study of archaeological sites and landscape change in Western France.

His brother, Geoffrey Scarre, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Durham. Together they co-edited the book The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice, published in 2006.

Academic career Scarre was Deputy Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge from its foundation in 1990 to 2005. In January 2006, Scarre was appointed Professor of Prehistory at the Department of Archaeology of the University of Durham. He served as Head of the Department of Archaeology at Durham from 2010 to 2013. He retired in 2021 and was made Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Durham.

He was editor of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal from 1991 to 2005. He was also editor of the international academic journal Antiquity, from January 2013 to December 2017.

He has directed and co-directed excavations at a number of prehistoric sites. These include sites in France, Portugal, and the Channel Islands. He excavated the Tumulus du Péré at Prissé-la-Charrière between 1995 and 2004 together with Luc Laporte and Roger Joussaume. The excavation revealed three early megalithic burial chambers from the fifth millennium BC. From 2008 to 2011 he led excavations exploring the prehistoric monuments of Herm. This AHRC-funded project found artefact spreads probably related to prehistoric manuring and ard-marks.

He conducted excavations at three sites in Portugal in collaboration with Luiz Oosterbeek: the Anta de Lajinha (2006-8), Cabeço dos Pendentes (2007 & 2015), and Anta do Vale da Laje (2017-18). The findings led to several articles and the book Megalithic Tombs in Western Iberia (2020).

Scarre was Principal Investigator of the interdisciplinary "Invisible Dead" project at Durham during 2013 and 2014. The project compared changing mortuary practices and beliefs about death in Britain and the Levant from the Neolithic to the Roman period. The project produced a co-edited volume, Engaging with the Dead (2017).

Honours Scarre was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) on 9 January 1986. In 2006 he received the Felix Neubergh Prize from the University of Gothenburg and was Professeur Invité at the Collège de France in Paris. He was a Trustee of the Council for British Archaeology from 2007 to 2013, a panel member on the NERC Radiocarbon Facility Steering Committee (2011-2015), and he sat on the Advisory Board for the National Geographic Society Global Exploration Fund for Northern Europe (2011-2016). He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Université de Rennes in 2018.

Selected works

Editorial activity