The programme explores how humans engage, and their ancestors engaged, with their world, both physical and social. It teaches the methods, approaches and techniques used to find out about and understand human societies: from archaeological prospection and excavation to the anthropological and archaeological analyses of artefacts and human and animal remains, survey and ethnographic fieldwork techniques, statistical analysis of social data, and the exploration and application of a broad range of philosophical ideas. These approaches involve a wide range of techniques and critical thinking skills, combining aspects of both sciences and humanities, which provide insight into human worlds both contemporary and ancient, and often greatly different from that of the 21st-century West.

An Archaeology and Anthropology degree is excellent preparation for future employment, offering a balance of sciences and arts and providing a range of both practical and intellectual components. These allow graduates to demonstrate many of the abilities that employers are known to look for such as working as part of a team, presentation skills, evidence-based reasoning, problem solving, project management, report writing and independent critical thinking. A high proportion of our graduates find full-time employment within six months of completing their degree (94% in 2012 compared with the national average for all graduates of 91%) and they follow a very wide range of career paths. Recently, our graduates have found jobs in such diverse areas as accountancy, administration, civil service, cartography and aerial photography, computer engineering and animation, geographic information systems, graphic design, life-guarding, nursing, the police, the armed services, environmental health, countryside management, engineering management, marketing, business, retailing and entertainment management.