Dr Timothy Clack

Chingiz Gutseriev Research Fellow in Archaeology and Anthropology
Fellow of St Peter’s College

Falklands War Mapping Project: https://cciproject.uk

Climate Change & (In)Security Project: https://www.falklandswarmappingproject.uk 

Mursiland Heritage Project: https://mursi-archaeology.com/about-the-project/about-the-project/

Tim’s research is interdisciplinary and explores aspects of the relationship between the past and present, the role of culture and heritage in conflict, different experiences of battlefields and material remains on them, and insecurity caused by, and human responses to, climate change.

After completing his PhD (Manchester, 2006), Tim held a series of lectureships at the University of Manchester and University of Oxford. He has been fortunate to conduct fieldwork in the Horn of Africa, South Atlantic, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Past projects have, for example, explored: changing understandings of heritage amongst cattle-herding nomadic communities (Omo Valley, Ethiopia); missionary activity and shifting religious identities in colonial settings (Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania); the material legacy of deployed military forces (Falkland Islands), and the past as a driver of contemporary conflict (Northern Kenya and South-Central Somalia).

Tim’s current doctoral students research topics including: climate change as a driver of micro-conflict in Kenya; shifting identities on the Kenyan-Somali borderlands; sacred heritage of the Chinese diaspora; the impact of armed conflict and heritage destruction on communities in Mali and the Falkland Islands, and heritage safeguarding initiatives in parts of Italy.

Contact details:

+44 (0)1865 278852
Timothy.clack@arch.ox.ac.uk

Selected Publications

Books

Clack, T. (with T. Pollard) (eds) 2022. 1982 Uncovered: The Falklands War Mapping Project. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Clack, T. (with M. Dunkley) (eds) 2022. Cultural Heritage in Modern Conflict: Past, Propaganda, Parade. London: Routledge.

Clack, T. (with R. Johnson) (eds) 2021. The World Information War: Western Resilience, Campaigning and Cognitive Effects. London: Routledge.

Clack, T. (with M. Brittain) (eds) 2018. The River: Peoples and Histories of the Omo-Turkana Area. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Clack, T. (with R. Johnson) (eds) 2018. Before Military Intervention: Upstream Stabilisation in Theory and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Clack, T. (with R. Johnson) (eds) 2015. At the End of Military Intervention: Historical, Theoretical and Applied Approaches to Transition, Handover and Withdrawal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Clack, T. 2008. Ancestral Roots: Modern Living and Human Evolution. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Clack, T. (with M. Brittain) (eds) 2007. Archaeology and the Media. London: Routledge.

Articles and Chapters

Clack, T. (with M. Dunkley, T. Gane and L. Rotherham) 2022. Heritage as a focus of US-Iran relations. (In) T. Clack and M. Dunkley (eds) Cultural Heritage in Modern Conflict: Past, Propaganda, Parade. London: Routledge, pp. 143-161.

Clack, T. 2022. Other than human hybridity? (In) T. Clack and M. Brittain (eds) Archaeologies of Cultural Contact: At the Interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 84-107.

Clack, T. (with M. Brittain) 2021. Life in the lines: archaeology and history of Force 122 camps during World War II. The Falkland Islands Journal 26-49.

Clack, T. (with L. Selisny) 2020. From Beijing bloggers to Whitehall writers: observations on the ‘invisible war’. (In) T. Clack and R. Johnson (eds) The World Information War: Western Resilience, Campaigning and Cognitive Effects. London: Routledge, pp. 259-280.

Clack, T. 2020. Archaeology, ethics, and armed conflict. (In) C. Smith (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Global Archaeology. Berlin: Springer, pp. 1-12.

Clack, T. (with J. S. Bonet and M. Brittain). 2018. Una perspectiva desde la cotidianidad sobre la cultura material mursi (SW Ethiopía) Complutum 28(2): 431-443.

Clack, T. (with M. Brittain and D. Turton) 2017. Oral histories and the impact of archaeological fieldwork in contact encounters: meeting Socrates on the Omo. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(4): 669-89.

Clack, T. (with T. Insoll and O. Rege) 2015. Mursi ox modification in the lower Omo Valley and the interpretation of cattle rock art in Ethiopia. Antiquity 89: 91-105.

Clack, T. (with M. Brittain and J. S. Bonet) 2013. Hybridity at the contact zone: ethnoarchaeological perspectives from the lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28(1): 133- 50.

Clack, T. (with M. Brittain) 2012. Pristine wilderness, participatory archaeology, and the custodianship of heritage in Mursiland. (In) T. Sternburg and L. Mols (eds) Changing Deserts: Integrating Environments and People. Cambridge: White Horse Press, pp. 192-212.

Clack, T. (with M. Brittain) 2011. Place-making, participative archaeologies and Mursi megaliths: some implications for aspects of pre- and proto-history in the Horn of Africa. Journal of Eastern African Studies 5(1): 85-107.

Clack, T. 2011. Thinking through the memoryscape: symbolic environmental potency on Mount Kilimanjaro. (In) T. Myllntaus (ed.) Thinking Through the Environment: Green Approaches to Global History. Cambridge: White Horse Press, pp 115-34.

Clack, T. 2009. Sheltering experience in underground places: thinking through precolonial Chagga caves on Mount Kilimanjaro. World Archaeology 41(2): 321-44.