Catherine Mary Hills is a British archaeologist and academic, who is a leading expert in Anglo-Saxon material culture. She is a senior research fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.

Education

In the 1960s, Hill excavated with Phillip Rahtz at Beckery chapel,

Glastonbury Glastonbury (, ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbur ...

Career

She was appointed as a lecturer in Cambridge in 1977 in the Department of Archaeology. Previous to that she was a Field Officer for Norfolk Archaeological Unit. Hills was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1978. She was a Fellow of

Newnham College Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millice ...

. Hills was closely associated with the excavation of the famous early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery at

Spong Hill Spong Hill is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery site located south of North Elmham in Norfolk, England. It is the largest known Early Anglo-Saxon cremation site. The site consists of a large cremation cemetery and a smaller, 6th century burial cemetery of ...

, North Elmham, Norfolk, where she directed excavations from 1974 until the completion of excavations in 1981. Hills' post-excavation analyses of this major site led to substantial contributions in the fields of early Anglo-Saxon archaeology, particularly regarding burial and migration, and more recently the chronology of the 5th century. She presented the Channel 4 series ''The Blood of the British.'' She is Vice-President of the Society for Medieval Archaeology from 2017-2022.

Selected publications

* Hills, C. (1979). The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England in the pagan period: A review. ''

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom o ...

,'' ''8'', 297-329. * Hills C.M. (1986). ''The Blood of the British''. London: George Philip * Hills C.M. (2003). ''Origins of the English''. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd. * Hills, C. (2007). History and archaeology: The state of play in early medieval Europe. '' Antiquity'' 81(311), 191-200. * Hills, C. (2011) Overview: Anglo‐Saxon Identity. ''The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology''. Oxford: OUP. * Hills C. and Lucy S. (2013). ''Spong Hill Part IX. Chronology and Synthesis''. Cambridge: McDonald Inst of Archaeological Research.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hills, Catherine Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British women archaeologists British archaeologists Academics of the University of Cambridge Anglo-Saxon studies scholars Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge