Prof Chris Gosden

His experience ranges from Papua New Guinea to Turkmenistan and from Borneo to Britain. He held positions at the University of Oxford for nearly thirty years, first as a curator-lecturer at the Pitt Rivers Museum and then as Professor of European Archaeology, a post he has just retired from. Recent projects include a history of the English landscape and identity and a study of Celtic art in Britain and Europe with its connections to Eurasia.  His latest book is The History of Magic and he’s now writing Humans: The First Seven Million Years. He is a trustee of the British Museum, a member of the Board of Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum and a fellow of learned societies including the British Academy and the Society of Antiquaries. Horsepower is his current major research project.

 

Chris says he’s long been fascinated by the interaction more than 2,000 years ago between the two major powers in Mongolia and China because it shaped their destinies in ways that ultimately had global implications.

 

For Chris, the Horsepower project will help to understand the relationship between the steppe and China – and between humans and their horses – through a broad range of disciplines.