The Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield, is under an institutional review. That means that every aspect of our department is assessed and the University will then make a decision about our future.  

The review group has presented 3 options which will be considered by the University Executive Board (UEB) next Tuesday - 25th May, (UEB consists of Senior Management, including the Vice Chancellor). These options are:

1. To investment in the Department with new posts and the development of new programmes.
2. To close the Department - but to honour commitments to existing students. 
3. To retain Archaeology as a discipline but not as a department - key programmes will be retained, but re-aligned to other Departments in the University along with associated staff. We are told these would probably only be two of our current masters programmes. Again, commitments to existing students would be honoured.

Options 2 & 3 will effectively mean the end of Archaeology at Sheffield after the last cohort has graduated, after a continuous and successful history of over 50 years. This would effectively make most, if not all the staff redundant and we would lose one of the best archaeological institutions we have.   

We would like to ask for your support in any way you can. We would like to persuade the Vice-Chancellor and the UEB to choose option 1 above. We feel we are a strong Archaeology Department, we have excellent students and feel we still have a lot to contribute to the discipline. If you can help us achieve this, please work with us by signing this petition and sharing this wherever you can.