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Professor David Griffiths

Director of Studies in Archaeology

Co-Director of Cultural Heritage Programme

Course Director of MSc Applied Landscape Archaeology

Programme Director, D.Phil in Archaeology

david.griffiths@conted.ox.ac.uk

https://www.kellogg.ox.ac.uk/our-people/david-griffiths/

Professor David Griffiths, BA, PhD (Durham), MA (Oxon), FSA, FSA Scot, MCIfA

(Full) Professor at the University of Oxford, David has taught at Oxford and has been a Fellow of Kellogg College since 1999. He studied History and Archaeology at Durham University and was a visiting student and fieldworker at the University of Tromsø, Norway. In the 1990s David was a professional archaeologist working in the gas pipeline construction industry and for a planning consultancy, and has also been a temporary lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.

David is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA), Scotland (FSA Scot.) and a Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (MCIfA).

David has been an active archaeological fieldworker since his first dig in 1982 (when still at school) on a hillfort in the Cotswolds, and his fascination with ancient sites and landscapes has taken him to many places around the world. His main area of research interest is in early medieval Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and the North Atlantic region.

Visiting Professor, University of Highlands and Islands, Institute for Northern Studies.
Member of the International Council of the Viking Congress. Co-Organiser and Co-Chair, 19th Viking Congress (Wales and North-West England, 2022), and co-editor of congress proceedings (published in 2026).
Member of Board of Visitors, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2019-23.
Member of the Academic Planning Group for new Museum of the Viking Age (Viking Ships Museum), University of Oslo, Norway.
British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow, 2014-15.
Winner: Inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement with Research, 2016 (Archeox, Archaeology of East Oxford Project).
REF 2021 Impact Case Study: Archeox

Professor Griffiths has been an external examiner for BA, Masters or PhDs at eleven other universities in the UK and beyond, including Durham, Aberdeen, Glasgow, York and Cambridge.

He has supervised or co-supervised fourteen D.Phil students in Continuing Education and the School of Archaeology, eight have completed/ passed, and six are in current registration; these are:

A.B. Siegenthaler
Genevieve Cain
Louise Formby-Tiedman
Jennifer Nolan
Scott Collier
Jennifer Maxwell-Harris

Professor Griffiths has been PI on the following research projects:

Birsay-Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project (Orkney, Scotland). Beginning in 2003, geophysics and selective excavation have revealed a wealth of exciting new data in this archaeologically-rich area. The landscape and structural report was published as a monograph entitled ‘Beside the Ocean’ by Oxbow Books in 2019. Work on the excavation archive is ongoing with colleagues in UHI and Durham, with new studies under way of soil chemical mapping, lipid biomarkers and animal isotopes. Current collaborations on wider contextual landscape interpretation with colleagues from UHI, Aberdeen and Nottingham. I am working with Orkney Museums to display the finds in a redesigned gallery, and planning a full-size reconstruction of the 27m Viking-age longhouse that we uncovered. Using traditional materials and skills, this will be coupled with a community engagement project and will take place at Kirbuster Farm Museum, 7km from the original site. 

Archeox: The East Oxford Community Archaeology Project ran 2008-20, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Oxford University, on the archaeology and history of the urban landscape of East Oxford. It engaged hundreds of local residents over seven years of fieldwork and archival research, and gave rise to an Impact Case Study for REF 21. Winner of inaugural 2016 Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement with Research. The open access monograph (2020) can be downloaded here (go to ‘Downloads’).

He has undertaken a number of field projects as part of postgraduate survey training with MSc Applied Landscape Archaeology students, including at the Neolithic Causewayed enclosure of Robin Hood’s Ball, near Larkhill, Wiltshire; in the environs of the Roman and Medieval small town of Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, and on the multi-period landscape of Hampton Gay, a rural medieval settlement in the Cherwell Valley north of Oxford.

In 2007, David completed a major research and publication project on the coastal site of Meols, Wirral, in conjunction with National Museums Liverpool. The online project archive is with the Archaeology Data Service together with the open access monograph pdf (go to ‘Downloads’).

He has also undertaken and completed research funded by Cadw on the Viking Age sculptured cross ‘Maen Achwyfan’ in North Wales (see list of publications below).

David’s book Vikings of the Irish Sea (2010 reprinted 2012, updated revised edition 2025) continues to be popular with academic, student and public audiences.

He has given many lectures and seminars, including the 2023 Sir David Wilson lecture (UCL/British Museum) the Whithorn Lecture and the H. Addyman Lecture (York), and have participated in countless conferences, workshops and colloquia in the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, France, Spain, Iceland, Greenland, and the USA, and has also done some media work with BBC 4 (Timewatch), and BBC local radio in Orkney and Oxfordshire.

Books, Monographs, journal articles, book chapters and edited volumes (list does not include book reviews which have been published in Medieval Archaeology, Antiquity, Archaeological Journal, Agricultural History Review, Scottish Historical Review, amongst others.)
Griffiths, D, Downham, C, Edwards N. and Edmonds, F. (eds) 2026 Viking Connections, Proceedings of the 19th Viking Congress, Wales and North-West England, 2022, Liverpool University Press.
Noble, G, Griffiths, D, Hillerdal, C. Allison, J, Hamilton, D and Batey, C. 2025 ‘Buckquoy, Orkney, addressing the Pictish-Viking transition in Northern Scotland’ Antiquity https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.10231
Griffiths, D. 2025 ‘Decolonising the North Atlantic Viking Story’, Viking Special Volume 3, Norwegian Archaeological Society, 27-41.
Sandoval-Castellanos, E. et al. (including Griffiths, D.) ‘Ancient mitogenomes from pre-pottery Neolithic central Anatolia and the effects of a Late Neolithic bottleneck in sheep (ovis aries)’, Science Advances 10, 15, April 2024,
Jamieson, A. et al. (including Griffiths, D.)  ’Palaeogenomic Evidence for the Long-Term Reproductive Isolation Between Wild and Domestic Cats’. Current Biology 14 March 2023,  SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4384594 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4384594
Griffiths, D. 2023 Chapter 1: ‘Landnam and Landscape in Viking Orkney’, in Horne, T, Pierce, E and Barrowman, R (eds) The Viking Age in Scotland, Edinburgh University Press, 13-28.
Griffiths, D., Bayer, O. and Wintle, W. 2022 ‘Geophysical Surveys at Hampton Gay 2021 and 2022’ South Midlands Archaeology 52, 115-16.
Griffiths, D. 2021 Chapter 21 (502-11) and Chapter 23 (533-540) in Morris, C, Batey, C, Emery, N, Fawcett, R, Griffiths, D, Outram, Z, Ovenden, S, Rackham, D.J, The Birsay Bay Project Volume 3, The Brough of Birsay, Orkney, Investigations 1954-2014, Oxbow, Oxford.
Griffiths, D. 2020 ‘How Scandinavian was the Viking Age in the Northern Isles?’ Viking Encounters: Proceedings of the XVIII Viking Congress, Aarhus University Press, 318-330.
Griffiths, D and Harrison, J. (eds) 2020 The Archaeology of East Oxford: Archeox, the Story of a Community, Thames Valley Landscapes Monograph Series 43, Oxford.
Griffiths, D. 2019 ‘Rethinking the Early Viking Age in the West’, Antiquity 93, Issue 368, April 2019, 468-77.
Griffiths, D, Harrison J. and Athanson, M. 2019  Beside the Ocean: Coastal Landscapes at the Bay of Skaill, Marwick and Birsay Bay, Orkney. Archaeological Research 2003-18. (in conjunction with Historic Environment Scotland, Oxbow, Oxford).
Wintle, W. and Griffiths, D. 2017 ‘Dorchester Abbey Cloisters Geophysical Survey 2012’ South Midlands Archaeology 47, 80-81.
Wintle, W., Griffiths, D. and Hey, G. 2016 ‘Geophysical Survey in Dorchester-on-Thames 2008’ South Midlands Archaeology 46, 93-95.
Griffiths, D. 2015 ‘Medieval Coastal Sand Inundation in Britain and Ireland’, Medieval Archaeology Vol 59, 103-121.
Griffiths, D. 2015 ‘Status and Identity in Norse Settlements: A Case Study from Orkney’ in Barrett, J.H. and Gibbon, S-J. (eds) Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 37 (Maney, Leeds), 219-36.
Griffiths, D. 2015 ‘Irish Sea identities and interconnections during the Viking Age’ in Clarke, H B. and Johnson, R. (eds) Vikings in Ireland and Beyond (Dublin, Four Courts Press), 470-484.
Griffiths, D. 2014 ‘Preface’, in Hurley, M.F, Russell, I.R. and Eogan, J (eds) Woodstown, A Viking Age Settlement in County Waterford (Dublin, Four Courts Press) http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2014/woodstown/
Griffiths, D. 2014 Early Medieval Whithorn, the Irish Sea Context, 21st Whithorn Lecture, 2013, (Whithorn Trust, Stranraer).
Harding, S, Griffiths, D, Royles, E. (eds) 2014 In Search of Vikings, Interdiscipinary approaches to the Scandinavian Heritage of North-West England (CRC Press, Taylor & Francis).
Griffiths, D. 2013 ‘Living in Viking Age Towns’ in Hadley, D.M. and Ten Harkel, L (eds) Towns in the Viking Age, (Oxbow, Oxford), 1-13.
Griffiths, D. 2013 ‘The Context of the 1858 Skaill Hoard’, in Reynolds, A. and Webster L. (eds) Early Medieval Art and Archaeology in the Northern World, Studies in Honour of James Graham-Campbell, Brill, 501-26.
Griffiths, D. and Harrison, J. 2011 ‘Interpreting Power and Status in the Landscape of Viking Age Orkney’, in Sigmundsson, S (ed.) Viking Settlements and Society, Proceedings of the XVI Viking Congress, Reykjavik, 2009 (National Museum of Iceland),  132-46.
Griffiths, D. and Harrison J 2011 ‘A Viking Age Settlement under wind-blown sand’ Medieval Britain and Ireland, 2010, Medieval Archaeology Vol. 55, 321-6.
Griffiths, D. 2011 ‘The Ending of Anglo-Saxon England: Identity, Allegiance and Nationality’, in Hamerow, H, Hinton, D. and Crawford, S. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, (Oxford University Press),  62-78.
Griffiths, D. 2011 ‘Towns and their Hinterlands’, in Crick, J and Van Houts, L (eds) A Social History of England, (Cambridge University Press), 152-78. 
Griffiths, D. and Ashmore, P. (eds) 2011 Aeolian Archaeology, the Archaeology of Sand Landscapes in Scotland (Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports 48) https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/issue.xhtml?recordId=1076852
Griffiths, D. 2010 (reprinted 2012) Vikings of the Irish Sea, Conflict and Assimilation AD 790-1050, (History Press).
Griffiths, D. 2009 ‘The Archaeological Background’, in Graham-Campbell, J. and Philpott, R. (eds) The Huxley Hoard, Scandinavian Settlement in the North West (National Museums Liverpool), 13-21.  
Griffiths, D. 2009 ‘Sand Dunes and Stray Finds: evidence for pre-Viking Trade?’ in Graham-Campbell, J. and Ryan, M. (eds) Anglo-Saxon/Irish Relations before the Vikings, Proceedings of the British Academy 157, 265-280.  
Griffiths, D., Philpott, R. and Egan, G. 2007 Meols, The Archaeology of the North Wirral Coast (Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph Series 68).
Griffiths, D. 2006 ‘Birsay and Skaill, Orkney, Landscape Survey 2003-4’, in Jones, R.E. and Sharpe, L (eds.) Going over Old Ground: Perspectives on archaeological, geophysical and geochemical survey in Scotland, (BAR British Series 416), 213-24.
Griffiths, D. 2006 ‘Maen Achwyfan, and the context of Viking Settlement in North-East Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis Vol. 155, 143-62.
Griffiths, D. 2004 ‘Settlement and Acculturation in the Irish Sea Region’ in Hines, J, Lane, A. and Redknap, M. (eds) Land Sea and Home, (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series 20), 125-38.
Griffiths, D. 2003 ‘Trade, Exchange and Urbanisation’ in Davies, Wendy (ed.) From the Vikings to the Normans, Short Oxford History of the British Isles 800-1100, (Oxford University Press), 73-104.
Griffiths, D. 2003 ‘Markets and Productive Sites, a view from Western Britain’ in Pestell, T. & Ulmschneider, K. (eds) Markets in Early Medieval Europe (Windgather Press) 62-72 (volume was winner of 2004 BAA Award for best scholarly publication).
Griffiths, D., Semple, S and Reynolds, A (eds) 2003 ‘Boundaries in Early Medieval Britain’ Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History Vol 12.
Griffiths, D. 2001 ‘The North-West Frontier’ in Hill, D. & Higham, N. (eds.) Edward the Elder (Routledge), 167-187.
Dickinson, T. and Griffiths, D. (eds) 1999 ‘The Making of Kingdoms’ Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History Vol. 10. 
Griffiths, D (ed) 1998 Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History Vol.  9.
Griffiths, D 1996 ‘The maritime economy of the Chester region in the Anglo-Saxon period’ in Carrington, P. (ed.) Where Deva spreads her wizard stream, Trade and the Port of Chester, Occasional Paper no. 3, Chester City Council, Chester, 49-60. 
Griffiths, D. (ed) 1995 Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History Vol.  8.
Griffiths, D. 1995 ‘The North-West Mercian burhs, a Reappraisal’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8, 75-86.
Filmer-Sanker, W. and Griffiths, D. (eds) 1994 Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History Vol.  7.
Griffiths, D. 1994 ‘Trade and the Port of Chester’ in Ward, S.W. Excavations at Chester, Saxon Occupation within the Roman Fortress, Chester Archaeological Service Reports No 7, Chester, 124-128. 
Griffiths, D. 1992 ‘The Coastal trading Ports of the Irish Sea’, in Graham-Campbell, J. (ed.) Viking Treasure from the North West, Liverpool: National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside, 63-72.
Griffiths, D. 1988 ‘A Group of Late Saxon hooked tags from Cheshire’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 70, 39-49.