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Dr Lesley McFadyen

Positions held:
  • Reader in Archaeology, School of Historical Studies
  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I have worked at ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú since 2011, and before that was a researcher in the University of Porto working on the project Material Culture as Architecture: from Neolithic Britain to Chalcolithic Portugal (funded by Fundação para Ciência e a Tecnologia).

    My research works across chronology and geography, and engages with evidence for the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age, particularly in Britain, France and Portugal.

    I have worked in developer-funded archaeology in Britain with the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, excavating prehistoric landscapes in East Anglia. Other projects include: Neolithic houses on Orkney and in Normandy; Neolithic long barrows in Dorset, Normandy and Brittany; and Chalcolithic walled enclosures in the Alto Douro of Portugal.

  • Research

    Research

    Research overview

    I am currently working on contemporary archaeology and heritage ecologies on the Ardeer Peninsula, Scotland. And community archaeologies, art and archaeology, and heritage ecologies on the Isle of Arran, Scotland, with a focus at Drumadoon. Both projects are collaborative and interdisciplinary in nature. An archaeology of photography and archaeological archives are key to my research.

    Other interests are architecture in prehistory, and the history of ideas between archaeology and architecture.
    My research on Chalcolithic walled enclosures examines what happens when material culture studies are directly connected to histories of architecture. Rather than thinking in traditional terms about a building and its subsequent use, I use my work on pottery to turn things around and think about occupation as a precedent for the design of architecture, and so building projects are a series of creative activities that emerge out of the rhythm and tempo of occupation.
    In other work, I have argued that Neolithic long barrows need to be understood through the detail of practices of making. I have written about architecture as practice, experience and participation in acts of building, and quick and slow architecture.

    Within Mesolithic studies on worked flint, I have looked at how material culture and landscape became entangled through people’s actions, and how through these energetic connections space was mobilised in the past.

    I am currently interested in redefining design practice and creativity in prehistory, and I participate in design studio teaching in Departments of Architecture. Themes that I explore are thinking-through-drawing, drawing lines and time, and drawing the materiality of time in materials.

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú:
    5

    I welcome students that are interested in prehistory, especially the archaeology of Britain, France and Portugal. A key area is research generated through artefact-based study or archive work, and archaeologists that take time over the detail in the evidence in order to rethink relationships between material culture, architecture and landscape in prehistory.

    I will happily supervise work that focuses on the relationship between archaeology and architectural history, or archaeology and design.

    Current doctoral researchers

    • BILL POWELL
      Nature of supervision:
      PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Title of thesis:
      More than Monuments. A material and practice-led approach to the concealed landscape of the everyday in Early Neolithic Pembrokeshire
    • PAUL BRICKELL
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • SAMANTHA BRUMMAGE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Inherited places: a Mesolithic-Neolithic taskscape in the Colne Valley
      Description:

      This thesis uses behavioural foundations, with a task-based methodology, to examine the nature of places in a prehistoric river valley, using size, type and distribution of artefacts.  The aim is to analyse concepts of settlement sites, and to question the categorisations, scale and direction of interpretations and archaeological narratives. 

      Awarded:
      2023
    • EDWARD SHEPHERD
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2023
    • BETH HODGETT
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Life in Photographs: Movement, Materiality and Temporality in the Archives of O.G.S. Crawford
      Awarded:
      2022
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    • Mcfadyen, Lesley and Boyd, A. (2024) . Landscape Research ISSN 0142-6397.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2016) . Estudos do Quaternário / Quaternary Studies 15, pp. 71-90. ISSN 2182-8660.
    • Baird, Jennifer A. and McFadyen, Lesley (2014) . Archaeological Review from Cambridge 29 (2), ISSN 0261-4332.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2010) . Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 76, pp. 95-113. ISSN 0079-497X.
    • McFadyen, Lesley and Barac, M. (2007) . Home Cultures 4 (2), pp. 109-115. ISSN 1740-6315.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2007) . Home Cultures 4 (2), pp. 117-128. ISSN 1740-6315.
    • Bayliss, A. and Benson, D. and Galer, D. and Humphrey, L. and McFadyen, Lesley and Whittle, A. (2007) . Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17 (S1), pp. 29-44. ISSN 0959-7743.
    • Whittle, A. and Barclay, A. and Bayliss, A. and McFadyen, Lesley and Schulting, R. and Wysocki, M. (2007) . Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17 (1), pp. 123-147. ISSN 0959-7743.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2006) . Journal of Iberian Archaeology 8, pp. 91-102.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2006) . Archaeological Review from Cambridge 21 (1), pp. 117-134. ISSN 0261-4332.

    Book

    • McFadyen, Lesley and Hicks, D., eds. (2019) . New York, U.S.: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350029682.

    Book section

    • Mcfadyen, Lesley (2025) . In: Exhibition Catalogue – Downland: Art and the Archaeological Imagination in Wiltshire. St Jude's and Random Spectacular. pp. 15-15. ISBN 9781739630898.
    • Knight, Mark and Mcfadyen, Lesley and Middleton, Lizzy (2024) . In: Knight, M. and Ballantyne, R. and Brudenell, M. and Cooper, A. and Gibson, D. and Robinson Zeki, I. (eds.) Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement: Volume 1. Landscape, architecture and occupation. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute Monographs. pp. 296-298. ISBN 9781913344146.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2021) . In: Soares Lopes, S. and Gomes, S. (eds.) Between the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BC: Exploring Cultural Diversity and Change in Late Prehistoric Communities. Oxford, UK: Archaeopress. ISBN 9781789699227.
    • Baird, Jennifer (2019) . In: McFadyen, Lesley and Hicks, D. (eds.) Archaeology and Photography: Time, Objectivity and Archive. London, UK: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350029682.
    • Mcfadyen, Lesley and Hicks, D. (2019) . In: Hicks, D. and Mcfadyen, Lesley (eds.) Archaeology and Photography: Time, Objectivity and Archive. London, UK: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350029682.
    • Knight, Mark and McFadyen, Lesley (2019) . In: McFadyen, Lesley and Hicks, D. (eds.) Archaeology and Photography: Time, Objectivity and Archive. London, UK: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350029682.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2018) . In: Brysbaert, A. and Klinkenberg, M. and Gutiérrez Garcia-M., A. and Vikatou, I. (eds.) Constructing Monuments, Perceiving Monumentality and the Economics of Building: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Built Environment. Sidestone Press. pp. 87-102. ISBN 9789088906961.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2016) . In: Bille, M. and Flohr-Sorensen, T. (eds.) Elements of Architecture: Assembling Architecture, Atmosphere and the Performance of Building Space. Archaeological Orientations. New York, U.S.: Routledge. pp. 53-62. ISBN 9781138775411.
    • McFadyen, Lesley and Vale, A. (2014) . In: Rebay-Smith, K. and Foxhall, L. and Brysbaert, A. (eds.) Knowledge Networks and Craft Traditions in the Ancient World. Routledge Studies in Archaeology. New York, U.S.: Routledge. pp. 23-36. ISBN 9780415843645.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2013) . In: Alberti, A. and Jones, A.M. and Pollard, J. (eds.) Archaeology after Interpretation: Returning Materials to Archaeological Theory. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. ISBN 9781611327250.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2013) . In: Hofmann, D. and Smyth, J. (eds.) Tracking the Neolithic House in Europe - Sedentism, Architecture and Practice. Sedentism, Architecture and Practice Series: One World Archaeology. New York, USA: Springer. ISBN 9781461452881.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2013) . In: Hofmann, D. and Smyth, J. (eds.) Tracking the Neolithic House in Europe - Sedentism, Architecture and Practice. One World Archaeology. New York, U.S.: Springer. pp. 363-372. ISBN 9781461452881.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2012) . In: Gunn, W. and Donovan, J. (eds.) Design and Anthropology. Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. pp. 101-120. ISBN 9781409421580.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2011) . In: Ingold, T, (ed.) Redrawing Anthropology. Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. ISBN 9781409417743.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2011) . In: Cannon, A. (ed.) Structured Worlds: The Archaeology of Hunter-Gatherer Thought and Action.. Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology. Sheffield, UK: Equinox. ISBN 9781845530808.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2010) . In: Garrow, D. and Yarrow, T. (eds.) Archaeology and Anthropology: Understanding Similarity, Exploring Differences. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books. pp. 40-52. ISBN 9781842173879.
    • Bailey, D and McFadyen, Lesley (2010) . In: Beaudry, M and Hicks, D (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford Handbooks in Archaeology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 562-587. ISBN 9780199218714.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2008) . In: David, B. and Thomas, J. (eds.) The Handbook of Landscape Archaeology. Walnut Creek, U.S.: Left Coast Press. pp. 307-314. ISBN 9781598742947.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2008) . In: Pollard, J. (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Hoboken, U.S.: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 121-134. ISBN 9781405125451.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2007) . In: Last, J. (ed.) Beyond the Grave: New Perspectives on Barrows. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books. pp. 22-29. ISBN 9781842172582.
    • McFadyen, Lesley (2006) . In: Conneller, C. and Warren, G. (eds.) Mesolithic Britain and Ireland: New Approaches. Stroud, UK: The History Press. pp. 121-138. ISBN 9780752437347.