Prize Winners

Antiquity awards two prizes annually for outstanding work in the field of archaeology.

The Antiquity Prize was created in 1994 by Editor Christopher Chippindale and the Antiquity Editorial Board in recognition of the fact that research funding was becoming increasingly competitive, the time to write difficult to find, and really good writing is ‘as rare and precious as ever’. They created the prize to honour and support the author(s) of the best contribution to each volume of Antiquity.

Ben Cullen (1964 – 1995) was a promising young archaeologist when he died unexpectedly, and the Ben Cullen Antiquity prize was founded by Ian Gollop in his honour in 1996. His work was published posthumously by Steele et al. (2000) Contagious Ideas: on Evolution, Culture, Archaeology and the Cultural Virus Theory. Selected Writings of Ben Cullen.

These articles are available to read for free.

Antiquity prize 2022

The return of the Beaker folk? Rethinking migration and population change in British prehistory
Ian Armit and David Reich

Ben Cullen prize 2022

The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales
Mike Parker Pearson, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Timothy Kinnaird, Dave Shaw, Ellen Simmons, Adam Stanford, Richard Bevins, Rob Ixer, Clive Ruggles, Jim Rylatt and Kevan Edinborough

Year	Antiquity Prize	Ben Cullen Prize
2021	New Neanderthal remains associated with the ‘flower burial’ at Shanidar Cave Emma Pomeroy, Paul Bennett, Chris O. Hunt, Tim Reynolds, Lucy Farr, Marine Frouin, James Holman, Ross Lane, Charles French and Graeme Barker	The architecture of access: ramps at ancient Greek healing sanctuaries Debby Sneed
2020	The Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement Mark Knight, Rachel Ballantyne, Iona Robinson Zeki and David Gibson	Boom and bust in Bronze Age Britain: major copper production from the Great Orme mine and European trade, c. 1600–1400 BC Alan Williams and Cécile Le Carlier de Veslud
2019	Elites and commoners at Great Zimbabwe: archaeological and ethnographic insights on social power Shadreck Chirikure, Robert Nyamushosho, Foreman Bandama and Collet Dandara	A moment frozen in time: evidence of a late fifth-century massacre at Sandby borg Clara Alfsdotter, Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay and Helena Victor Social responses to climate change in Iron Age north-east Thailand: new archaeobotanical evidence Cristina C. Castillo, Charles F.W. Higham, Katie Miller, Nigel Chang, Katerina Douka, Thomas F.G. Higham and Dorian Q Fuller When peripheries were centres: a preliminary study of the Shimao-centred polity in the loess highland, China Li Jaang, Zhouyong Sun, Jing Shao and Min Li
2018	Identifying ‘plantscapes’ at the Classic Maya village of Joya de Cerén, El Salvador Alan Farahani, Katherine L. Chiou, Anna Harkey, Christine A. Hastorf, David L. Lentz and Payson Sheets	The Ypres Salient 1914–1918: historical aerial photography and the landscape of war Birger Stichelbaut, Wouter Gheyle, Veerle Van Eetvelde, Marc Van Meirvenne, Timothy Saey, Nicolas Note, Hanne Van den Berghe and Jean Bourgeois
2017	Satellite evidence of archaeological site looting in Egypt: 2002–2013 Sarah Parcak, David Gathings, Chase Childs, Greg Mumford and Eric Cline	Beaker people in Britain: migration, mobility and diet M. Parker Pearson, Andrew Chamberlain, Mandy Jay, Mike Richards, Alison Sheridan, Neil Curtis, Jane Evans, Alex Gibson, Margaret Hutchison, Patrick Mahoney, Peter Marshall, Janet Montgomery, Stuart Needham, Sandra O'Mahoney, Maura Pellegrini & Neil Wilkin
2016	Hubs and upstarts: pathways to urbanism in the northern Fertile Crescent Dan Lawrence & T.J. Wilkinson	The landscape of Angkor Wat redefined Damian Evans & Roland Fletcher
2014	Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: a prehistoric perspective on Egypt’s place in Africa David Wengrow, Michael Dee, Sarah Foster, Alice Stevenson & Christopher Bronk Ramsey	'Gifts for the gods': lake-dwellers' macabre remedies against floods in the Central European Bronze Age Francesco Menotti, Benjamin Jennings & Hartmut Gollnisch-Moos
2013	The first towns in the central Sahara D.J. Mattingly & M. Sterry	The social construction of caves and rockshelters: Chauvet Cave (France) and Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia) Jean-Jacques Delannoy, Bruno David, Jean-Michel Geneste, Margaret Katherine, Bryce Barker, Ray L. Whear and Robert G. Gunn
2012	The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey Oliver Dietrich, Manfred Heun, Jens Notroff, Klaus Schmidt and Martin Zarnkow	Stonehenge remodelled Timothy Darvill, Peter Marshall, Mike Parker Pearson and Geoff Wainwright
2011	An 11 600 year-old communal structure from the Neolithic of southern Jordan Steven Mithen, Bill Finlayson, Sam Smith, Emma Jenkins, Mohammed Najjar and Darko Maričević	Across the Indian Ocean: the prehistoric movement of plants and animals Dorian Fuller, Nicole Boivin, Tom Hoogervorst and Robin Allaby
2010	New light on Neolithic revolution in south-west Asia Trevor Watkins	Administrators' bread: an experiment-based re-assessment of the functional and cultural role of the Uruk bevel-rim bowl Jill Goulder
2009	'The Farm Beneath the Sand' – an archaeological case study on ancient 'dirt' DNA Martin B. Hebsgaard, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Jette Arneborg, Patricia Heyn, Morten E. Allentoft, Michael Bunce, Kasper Munch, Charles Schweger and Eske Willerslev	A new chronological framework for prehistoric Southeast Asia, based on a Bayesian model from Ban Non Wat Charles Higham & Thomas Higham
2008	Inside and outside the dry stone walls: revisiting the material culture of Great Zimbabwe Shadreck Chirikure & Innocent Pikirayi	Archaeological resource modelling in temperate river valleys: a case study from the Trent Valley, UK A.J. Howard, A.G. Brown, C.J. Carey, K. Challis, L.P. Cooper, M. Kincey and P. Toms
2007	Rome and Mesopotamia – importers into India in the first millennium AD Roberta Tomber	Networks and nodal points: the emergence of towns in early Viking Age Scandinavia Søren M. Sindbæk
2006	Tectonics and human evolution Geoffrey King & Geoffrey Bailey	King's monuments: identifying 'formlings' in southern African San rock paintings Siyakha Mguni
2005	The politics of supply: the Neolithic axe industry in Alpine Europe Eric Thirault	Core–periphery relations in the Recuay hinterlands: economic interaction at Chinchawas, Peru George Lau
2004	The early development of music. Analysis of the Jiahu bone flutes Juzhong Zhang, Xinghua Xiao & Yun Kuen Lee	Rock art and rock music: petroglyphs of the south Indian Neolithic Nicole Boivin
2003	Dance of the Cranes: Crane symbolism at Çatalhöyük and beyond Nerissa Russell & Kevin McGowan	CORONA Satellite Photography and Ancient Road Networks: A Northern Mesopotamian Case Study Jason Ur
2002	Too many ancestors James Whitley	The innocents and the sceptics: ANTIQUITY and Classical archaeology Nicola Terranato
2001	Orientations and origins: a symbolic dimension to the long house in Neolithic Europe Richard Bradley	The South Scandinavian barrows with well-preserved oak-log coffins Mads Kähler-Holst, Henrik Breuning-Madsen & Marianne Rasmussen
2000	Cosmology, calendars and society in Neolithic Orkney: a rejoinder to Euan MacKie Clive Ruggles & Gordon Barclay	Resource depression on the Northwest Coast of North America Virginia L. Butler
1999	V. Gordon Childe and the vocabulary of revolutionary change Kevin Greene	Architecture and sound: an acoustic analysis of megalithic monuments in prehistoric Britain Aaron Watson and David Keating
1998	Genetics, linguistics, and prehistory: thinking big and thinking straight Patrick Sims-Williams	'The changing face of clay': continuity and change in the transition from village to urban life in the Near East David Wengrow
1997	Lapita and the temporal geography of prehistory John E. Terrell & Robert L. Welsch	The population of ancient Rome Glenn R. Storey
1996	Sea-level change and shore-line evolution in Aegean Greece since Upper Palaeolithic time Kurt Lambeck	Ploughzone sampling in Denmark: isolating and interpreting site signatures from disturbed contexts John M. Steinberg
1995	The evidence for early writing: utilitarian or ceremonial? Nicholas Postgate, Tao Wang & Toby Wilkinson
1994	Of Lightning Brothers and White Cockatoos: dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the Northern Territory, Australia Bruno David, Ian McNiven, Val Attenbrow, Josephine Flood and Jackie Collins

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