Archaeologists study the material remains of past and present human societies and cultures in order to understand how they functioned and how they changed through time. The use of a long-term temporal perspective enables archaeologists to test questions about sociocultural adaptations and evolution.

The research interests of the archaeology faculty are diverse yet there are shared strengths in topical and regional themes such as palaeoanthropology, sociocultural evolution, urbanism, and historical archaeology.

Current faculty research includes: the transition from archaic Homo sapiens to anatomically modern humans through the study of faunal materials in France; the emergence of social inequalities in the Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula; the study of preindustrial urban demography and world systems theory in the archaeology of the Roman empire;  and regional interaction and migration in late prehistoric North America.