The Museum of Classical Archaeology is dedicated to the study and teaching of the classical past through the material and visual cultures of ancient Greece and Rome.
Our collections are rather unusual, however. We don’t only hold objects from 2,000 or so years ago – we also hold objects produced in the 19th century to replicate ancient artefacts which were housed somewhere else in the world.
Our Cast Gallery is home to one of the finest collections of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture anywhere in the world – and our Museum has as many stories to tell about the practice of classical archaeology and the history of collecting the ancient past as it does about the history of classical art and the lives of ancient Greeks and Romans.
What is Classical Archaeology?
Classical Archaeology is the study of the physical remains left behind the people of antiquity, the material and visual cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. It grew as a discipline of academic study in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Our cast collection and the foundation of the Museum of Classical Archaeology in 1884 are testament to the privileged position of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture in those early years. But by the end of the First World War classical archaeologists were beginning to turn their gaze away from statuary toward a broader range of material evidence and methods – borne witness in the research range of the study of classical archaeology in the Faculty of Classics today.