Howard Williams

Howard M. R. Williams (born 1972) is a British archaeologist and academic who is professor of archeology at the University of Chester in England. His research focuses on the study of death, burial and memory in early medieval Britain.

Biography Williams obtained a BSc from the University of Sheffield, and later attended the University of Reading where he received a MS and a PhD. degree.

Williams's research focuses on the archaeology of early medieval Britain. He has published scholarly journals, books, and co-published books on the archaeology of medieval Britain, death and burial, Vikings, and landscapes and memory. In 2019 Williams led the establishment of the Offa's Dyke Journal, an open access journal 'promoting the archaeology, history and heritage of frontiers and borderlands focusing on the Anglo-Welsh border'; the journal is edited by Williams and Liam Delaney.

In December 2018, Williams was featured in the BBC 4 documentary Beyond the Walls: In Search of the Celts.

Awards and recognition On 16 February 2006, Williams was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA). In 2017, he won the Society for Medieval Archaeology's Martyn Jope Award for "the best novel interpretation, application of analytical method or presentation of new findings" published in that year's volume of Medieval Archaeology, along with co-author Patricia Murrieta-Flores.

Selected publications

Bradley, R.J. & Williams, H. (eds). The Past in the Past: The Reuse of Ancient Monuments. World Archaeology 30 (1). London: Routledge. (1998, editor) Williams, H. (ed.). Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. (2003, editor) Williams, H. Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2006) Semple, S. & Williams, H. (eds). Early Medieval Mortuary Practices. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology & History 14. Oxford: Oxbow. (2007, editor)

Sayer, D. & Williams, H. (eds). Mortuary Practices & Social Identities in the Middle Ages: Essays in Burial Archaeology in Honour of Heinrich Härke. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. (2009, editor) Williams, H., Kirton, J. and Gondek, M. (eds) Early Medieval Stone Monuments: Materiality, Biography, Landscape. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. (2015, editors) Williams, H. and Giles, M. (eds) Archaeologists and the Dead. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2016, editors) Williams, H. (ed.) Mortuary citations: Death and Memory in the Viking World. Special issue of the European Journal of Archaeology 19(3). (2016, guest editor). Cerezo-Román, J. I., Wessman, A. and Williams, H. (eds) Cremation and the Archaeology of Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2017, editors)