Profile

Biography

Aleksandra McClain BA (Yale), MA, PhD (York) is a medieval archaeologist who specialises in the study of churches, commemoration, and the Anglo-Norman period. She teaches in the archaeology department and in the Centre for Medieval Studies on British medieval and historical archaeology, buildings archaeology, landscape archaeology, and the archaeology of religion.

After completing her PhD research on church building and commemorative patronage in late-Saxon and Anglo-Norman North Yorkshire at York in 2005, Aleks worked for the department for a year as a fixed-term lecturer.  She then went on to work for two years in the School of History at the University of East Anglia, as a post-doctoral research assistant on the AHRC-funded project 'A GIS-aided study of agriculture and the landscape in Midland England,' which examined the historic landscape of Northamptonshire up to the time of enclosure. Aleks came back to York as a lecturer at the end of 2008, and since that time has been director of studies of the MA in Medieval Archaeology.

Departmental roles

• Director of Studies, MA in Medieval Archaeology
• Deputy Undergraduate Admissions Officer
• Departmental website contact

University roles

• Member of the university's International Forum

Research

Overview

Aleks' research has been focused on examinations of spatial and chronological patterns of church building, funerary commemoration, and elite patronage in northern England in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Her wider research interests include transition periods and cultural contact, the material culture of the Anglo-Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman periods, social and cultural identity, the nature and material expression of medieval lordship, the development of the medieval rural landscape, the material and ideological relationship between religious and secular authority, and patronage of ecclesiastical material culture.  She also has a particular interest in the north of England, and the development of northern local and regional identities in the Middle Ages.

Current projects

• Cross slabs in northern England, 1000-1600, in collaboration with Peter Ryder (funded by the Marc Fitch Fund).  This project is undertaking the systematic recording of medieval non-effigial commemoration in the northern counties of England.  The project will produce a full printed catalogue of Yorkshire cross slab monuments, and an online, interactive database of the northern corpus. The project utilizes GIS to map these monuments, in order to aid the spatial and chronological analysis of patterns of production, distribution, style, and their relationships to elements of topography, political and ecclesiastical divisions, manorial structures, settlement and landscape, and the secular and religious built environment. In addition, the project explores significance of cross slabs to medieval concepts of social identity, memory, and competitive expenditure and display.
• Future work seeks to expand the study of the cultural, social, and landscape contexts of churches and monuments to regions elsewhere in England, as well as to explore contemporary commemorative culture in Normandy and northern France. 
  
• Aleks is also pursuing research examining the negotiation of transition in the Anglo-Norman period, particularly focusing on recasting, through material culture, long-standing assumptions about the Norman Conquest in the north.  The Anglo-Norman period can be considered via a range of sources of evidence, including material culture, the built environment, and the tenurial landscape.

Research group(s)

• Medieval and Historical Archaeology
• Landscape and Society
• Material Cultures

Supervision

• Dav Smith: An archaeological examination of the 'Street' parish churches in Ryedale, North Yorskhire
• Jane-Heloise Nancarrow (CMS): The appropriation of Roman material culture and ideology in Anglo-Norman towns
  

Teaching

Undergraduate

1st year

Prehistory to the Present

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2nd year

Themes in Historical Archaeology: Late Medieval

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3rd year

Assessed Seminar: The Archaeology of British Christianity

Special Topic: The Anglo-Norman World

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Postgraduate

Medieval Settlement and Communities

Using Archaeology (Centre for Medieval Studies)

The Gosforth Cross (Centre for Medieval Studies)

The Vikings in Northumbria, c. 793-1200: Actors and Identities (Centre for Medieval Studies)

External activities

Memberships

• Executive committee for the Society for Church Archaeology, and manages the SCA website
• Member of the Society for Medieval Archaeology
• Departmental representative on the Yorkshire and Humberside ALGAO committee
  

Editorial duties

• Editor of the Society for Church Archaeology Newsletter and assistant editor for Church Archaeology
  
• Created and maintained website for the AHRC-funded project Empire and Landscape in the Long 18th Century