Professor Graham Philip

Professor in the Department of Archaeology

What do you do?

I am an archaeologist whose research concerns landscape archaeology, artefact studies, and the investigation of early complex societies. All of these themes are explored in the context of the later Prehistory and Bronze Ages of southwest Asia. 

I have worked at Durham University since 1994, and have directed fieldwork in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. From 1999-2010, I directed a multi-period landscape project in the Orontes Valley around the city of Homs. The survey encompassed two distinct regions, calcareous marls and volcanic terrain, so we could the assess the impact of key economic and political developments in adjacent, but contrasting, physical environments.

How are you involved in this area of science? 

My landscape research around Homs pioneered the use of declassified 1960s CORONA space photography and IKONOS high-resolution commercial satellite imagery for archaeological prospection and change-monitoring. With this background and having supervised several doctoral candidates in the use of remote sensing in archaeology, I led the Durham team that joined EAMENA in 2016, and that leads the work of EAMENA in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and western Iran. 

By building upon our technical skills and pre-existing regional knowledge and contacts, we have created site-inventories for these countries.  With support from the Cultural Protection Fund of the British Council from 2017 onwards, we have developed online training materials and held in-country workshops to equip local heritage managers to document their own heritage using remote sensing techniques.