Jacqui Mulville


Jacqueline Mulville is a British bioarchaeologist and Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University. Mulville is a field archaeologist whose research focuses on osteoarchaeology, human and animal identities, and island archaeologies concentrated on Britain.

Education and career

Archaeology was not the initial career choice of Mulville, who undertook a BSc in Biology at Imperial College London.
Volunteer work however marked the start of her career in archaeology, and she worked as a field archaeologist for English Heritage on sites including Beeston Castle, and as a Research Assistant for English Heritage at the University of Cambridge examining evidence from Roman and later periods from Chelmsford and Colchester.
She undertook a PhD at the University of Sheffield, under the supervision of Paul Halstead, being awarded a doctorate in 1995 for her thesis 'Milking, Herd Structure, and Bone Chemistry: An Evaluation of Archaeozoological Methods for the Recognition of Dairying'. This analysed the identification of milking, using domestic dairy cattle and St Kilda Soay Sheep as study populations.
Mulville then worked for the West Yorkshire Archaeology Service, recording material from West Heslerton, and as a commercial archaeologist at the University of Sheffield, before returning to English Heritage at Birmingham University to analyse a medieval assemblage from Castle Mall Norwich. At Southampton University she was a Research Assistant for English Heritage, examining Saxon and Neolithic sites. Mulville excavated at South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, and was a co-director of excavations at Cladh Hallan. This investigated the only two bodies known to have been mummified among the early tribes of Europe, although Mulville suggested the practice may have been more common than we know, and said that the finds at Cladh Hallan raised more questions than they answered.
Mulville became a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, working sites including Glaston and Fiskerton. After this she taught briefly at University College Winchester before moving in 2002 to Cardiff University where she replaced Professor John Evans on his retirement.
She founded Guerilla Archaeology, a Cardiff-based outreach organisation of archaeologists, scientists and artists.

Awards

Mulville is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, where she gave one of the 2015 Rhind Lectures, on "Storytelling".

Books