Jess Hornby

Jess Hornby

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesshornby/
Twitter: https://x.com/jesslhornby
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jl.hornby
Email: J.L.Hornby@liverpool.ac.uk

Thesis Title

Time-slicing cemeteries: New method for understanding Iron Age identity in Britain before Rome (400 BC–AD 43)

Institution

University of Liverpool

Supervisors

Dr Rachel Pope
Dr Matthew Fitzjohn

Research Summary

The research investigates and re-assesses Iron Age burial identities across time and space in East Yorkshire. In Britain, the five centuries-long ‘Later Iron Age’ has resisted segmentation, leaving interpretation to broad-period models, characteristically dominated by ‘high status’ burials. Resultingly, public understandings of society in Iron Age Britain remain reliant on Roman textual sources and the backwards projection of stereotypes by archaeologists of the 19th and 20th century.

To establish a new understanding of identities in Later Iron Age Britain, the project aims to develop a data-driven, contextual methodology – piecing together diverse identities from the data itself. The method involves applying new object typologies and radiocarbon dating to the Yorkshire cemetery data, to visually map/plot the spatial-temporal development of cemeteries – a method successfully applied in Dutch prehistory and Early Medieval studies. This will identify temporal burial trends, isolating evidence for changing identities, thus refining our understanding of pre-Roman Iron Age society.

Research Interests

Identity studies,
Funerary Archaeology,
Iron Age Britain,
Modern British History,
Working Class History,
Subcultures and Society,
Genealogy.

Publications

Conference paper: ‘Time-Slicing Cemeteries: New Method for Understanding Iron Age Identity in Britain Before Rome’. Council for British Archaeology and CIfA Student and Early Careers Conference 2024. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awo54uR-l8A

Co-authored conference paper: ‘Young Voices, New Directions: Early Career Professionals’ Ideal Scenarios in Archaeology & Heritage’. Council for British Archaeology and CIfA Student and Early Careers Conference 2024. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShfkfMzMedY

Co-authored magazine article: Baptiste Halliday, M., Hornby, J. and Bowen, A. (2024).

CBA Youth Advisory Board: What do we want to achieve?. British Archaeology Magazine.

Finds image editing feature: Oakden, V. (2024). Piermaster’s Green: Stories from the docks. British Archaeology Magazine.

Finds Image editing feature: Stewart, L. and Oakden, V. (2022). The Archaeology of Merseyside in 20 Digs. Liverpool: Amberley Publishing.

Blog post: Hornby, J. (2021). Kickstart your career in Archaeology: Jess, Museum of Liverpool. Council for British Archaeology. Available at: https://www.yac-uk.org/news/kickstart-your-career-in-archaeology-jess-museum-of-liverpool.

Newsletter: Hornby, J. (2021). The Golden Key: An update from the Piermaster’s Green Dig. Merseyside Archaeological Society 6/2021. Available at: https://www.merseysidearchsoc.com/uploads/2/7/2/9/2729758/mas_bulletin_june_final.pdf

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