Dr Timothy Clack

Chingiz Gutseriev Associate Professor 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

Digging Market Garden Project: https://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/digging-market-garden-project

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

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

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, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Past projects have, for example, explored: climate change impacts to geopolitical and human security (Jordan); 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).

Topics that Tim’s current doctoral students research include: institutional responses to climate insecurity in Somalia; shifting governmental conceptualisations of climate security in global perspective; military wargaming in the Indo-Pacific; shifting collective identities in the Kenyan-Somali borderlands; influence of international funders in post-conflict heritage reconstruction; impact of armed conflict and heritage destruction on communities in Mali and the Falkland Islands; heritage safeguarding initiatives in parts of Italy; and sacred heritage of the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia and Vietnam.

Contact details:

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

Selected Publications

Books and special issues

Clack, T. (with S. Chirikure) (eds) 2025. ‘Colonialism from Within: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives from Africa’. Special issue of Azania 60(3).

Clack, T. (with B. Finlayson and B. Rouhani) (eds) 2025. Reporting Heritage Destruction. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Clack, T. (with L. Selisny and Z. Meral) (eds) 2023. Hot War: Climate Change, Conflict and (In)Security. London: Routledge.

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 S. Chirikure). 2025. Is the human past a history of colonialism? Azania: Archaeological Research from Africa 60(3).

Clack, T. (and T. Mukwende and S. Chirikure) 2025. (Post-)colonialism as ideology and power’s grip on material culture: the Shangani Battle Site/Pupu Memorial in Zimbabwe. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 60(3).

Clack, T. (with S. Raine) 2025. Counterterrorism lessons for climate security: a trade in tradecraft. The RUSI Journal 170(2): 34-45.

Clack, T. (with B. Rouhani and B. Finlayson). 2025. Can reporting heritage destruction be a double-edged sword? (In) B. Rouhani, B. Finlayson and T. Clack (eds) Reporting Heritage Destruction. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Clack, T. 2025. From the frontlines to the headlines or headlines to the frontlines? Some observations on media reporting of the destruction of cultural heritage in war. (In) B. Rouhani, B. Finlayson and T. Clack (eds) Reporting Heritage Destruction. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Clack, T. (with T. Pollard) 2025. The cultural heritage of the Falklands War, 1982. (In) I. Saloul and B. Baillie (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Clack, T. (with T. Pollard) 2024. The archaeological survey of remains from the 1982 Falklands War. Journal of Conflict Archaeology. 19(1): 65-101.

Clack, T. (with S. Jardine) 2023. Geopolitics and security in the changing Antarctic. (In) T. Clack, Z. Meral and L. Selisny (eds) Hot War: Climate Change, Conflict and Insecurity. London: Routledge.

Clack, T. (with T. Burwell and L. Selisny) 2023. Climate intelligence in theory and practice. (In) T. Clack, Z. Meral and L. Selisny (eds) Hot War: Climate Change, Conflict and Insecurity. London: Routledge.

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.