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Departmental homepageProfessor Barker studied Classics and then Archaeology at St John's College for his undergraduate degree, staying on to complete his PhD on Italian prehistory. After lecturing for 12 years at the University of Sheffield, he served as Director of the British School at Rome (1984-88) and was then appointed Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester where he served as Head of the School of Archaeological Studies, Founding Dean of the University Graduate School and Pro-Vice-Chancellor. In 2004 he returned to Cambridge as Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, and was elected a Professorial Fellow at St John's College. He is currently Disney Professor of Archaeology Emeritus and a Senior Research Fellow in the McDonald Institute. In 2014 he was awarded a CBE in the Queen's New Year Honours for his services to Archaeology.
Professor Barker supervises core papers in Part I of the Archaeology Tripos.
Professor Barker is interested in the archaeology of mutual interactions between people and their environment in the past, and how these can inform the present-day challenges such as landscape resilience in the face of climate change. He has pursued these interests in semi-arid, desertic and tropical rainforest landscapes, and with the archaeology of hunter-gatherer, agricultural and pastoral societies. His major current field project, excavating Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, is investigating the lifeways of the Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens who used the cave and what we can learn from these about why Neanderthals became extinct around 40,000 years ago. The project is the centrepiece of the May 2024 Netflix documentary Secrets of the Neanderthals.
Pomeroy, E., P. Bennett, C. Hunt, T. Reynolds, L. Farr, M. Frouin, J. Holman, R. Lane, C. French, & G. Barker (2020) New Neanderthal remains associated with the ‘Flower Burial’ at Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan. Antiquity 94 (373): 11-26 (awarded Antiquity prize for 2020).
Barker, G. (2022) Living with risk in drylands: archaeological perspectives. The Holocene (special issue ‘Risky Business: Comparative Approaches to Risk and Resilience in Arid Landscapes’, eds A. Damick, C. Weinberg & E. Dawson).
Barker, G. (ed.) (2013) Rainforest Foraging and Farming in Island Southeast Asia: the Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, McDonald Institute Monographs, 410 pp. and companion volume Barker, G. & L. Farr (2016, eds.) Archaeological Investigations in the Niah Caves, Sarawak. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, McDonald Institute Monographs, 575 pp and CD with 339 pp Supplementary Material.
Barker, G., and T. Rasmussen (2023) In the Footsteps of the Etruscans: Changing Landscapes around Tuscania from Prehistory to Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (British School at Rome Studies), ISBN 9781009230025, 382 pp.
