LIAM MCNAMARA

Keeper of the Department of Antiquities

Liam McNamara

Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator for Ancient Egypt and Sudan
Associate Professor of Egyptology

Contact

Email: liam.mcnamara@ashmus.ox.ac.uk
Academia.edu: Liam McNamara
ORCID: 0000-0003-3598-580X

X: @liam_a_mcnamara
Instagram: @liam_a_mcnamara

University of Oxford webpages

Governing Body Fellow, Wolfson College
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
School of Archaeology

Biography

Liam McNamara is Keeper (Senior Curator) of the Department of Antiquities and Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator for Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the Ashmolean Museum. He is Associate Professor of Egyptology and a Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. 

Liam was Lead Curator on the redevelopment of the Ashmolean’s permanent galleries for ancient Egypt and Sudan which opened to the public in November 2011.

He co-curated (with Paul Collins) the temporary exhibition Discovering Tutankhamun at the Ashmolean from 24 July–2 November 2014. Liam also served as Director of the Griffith Institute (the University of Oxford’s research centre for Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies) from 2015–2019.

Prior to his appointment at the Ashmolean in 2010, Liam was a Project Curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum.

Liam is Co-Director of the Ashmolean’s Expeditions to Hierakonpolis and Elkab in Egypt. He has worked as an archaeological illustrator and field archaeologist on excavations at Kom Firin in the western Nile Delta (directed by Neal Spencer) and at Hierakonpolis in southern Egypt (directed by Renée Friedman). He has also worked on an epigraphic survey of sites in northern Sudan with the British Museum (directed by Vivian Davies). 

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Liam’s research interests centre on the archaeology and material culture of ancient Egypt and Sudan. He specialises in the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods (late 4th–early 3rd millennium BC), for which the Ashmolean holds the most significant collections outside Egypt.

He is currently working on a catalogue and study of the Ashmolean’s unpublished ivory and bone artefacts from the Hierakonpolis ‘Main Deposit’ (a cache of early votive objects excavated at the site in 1897), including a major reinterpretation of the archaeological context in which they were discovered.

Liam is also interested in the history of museums, particularly the relationship between archaeological fieldwork, object distribution and the development of museum collections, as well as the disciplinary histories of archaeology, anthropology and Egyptology.

Research projects

‘Holy rubbish’? Ancient Egyptian ivories from the Hierakonpolis ‘Main Deposit’.

Co-Director of the Hierakonpolis Expedition, archaeological fieldwork project in Egypt [LINK].
Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded research project Artefacts of Excavation: British Excavations in Egypt 1880–1980

Liam teaches for several Faculties and Departments at the University of Oxford:

Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford

  • Final Honour School Paper for BA Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies: Selected Egyptian Artefacts.
  • Honour Moderations Paper for BA Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies: History and Civilisations of the Ancient Near East.

School of Archaeology, University of Oxford

  • Final Honour School Option Paper for BA in Archaeology: Mesopotamia and Egypt 3500–2000 BC.
  • Honour Moderations Paper I for BA in Archaeology: Introduction to World Archaeology.

Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford

  • Final Honour School Option Paper for BA in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History (CAAH): Ancient Egyptian Art and Material Culture.

Faculty of History, University of Oxford

  • Prelims Paper 4 for BA History of Art: Extended Essay: Images, Objects and Buildings in Oxford.

Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford

  • Handling sessions and gallery tours Oxford University Summer School for Adults – Egyptology programmes.

Liam is happy to supervise doctoral (DPhil) research on the Ashmolean’s collections from ancient Egypt and Sudan, especially within his specialism on the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods, as well as other topics in the art, archaeology and material culture of the region. For a list of potential D.Phil. research projects based on the Ashmolean collections, see here [LINK]. 

Liam also supervises undergraduate (BA) and postgraduate (MSt; MPhil) extended essays and dissertations in his areas of expertise and/or with a particular focus on the Ashmolean’s collections.

Current research students

Late Neolithic spheres of interaction: a comparative study of the lithic assemblages of the Egyptian southern Western Desert and the Upper Egyptian Nile Valley

Hebatallah Ibrahim Abdelbasset | DPhil Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Egyptology) | Supervisors: Renée Friedman, Liam McNamara and Richard Parkinson

Previous research students

Pilgrim flasks: chronological and cultural transformations from the New Kingdom to the Napatan period
Loretta Kilroe (2019) ORA | DPhil Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Egyptology) | Supervisors: Linda Hulin, Liam McNamara and Richard Parkinson

2022 Documentary Tutankhamun: The Last Exhibition (Director: Ernesto Pagano; Producer: Sandro Vannini) marking the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 and the preparation of the major international exhibition of treasures from the tomb in Los Angeles in 2019.
2018 Smithsonian Channel documentary Beasts of the Pharaohs (Blink Films). Interview about excavations at Hierakonpolis and animals in ancient Egypt.
https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/episodes/9iowsp/secrets-unlocked-beasts-of-the-pharaohs-season-1-ep-11.
2018 BBC Four television documentary Dwarfs in art: a new perspective (What Larks! Productions). Interview about representations of dwarfs in ancient Egyptian art and material culture.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bgffgg.
2017 BBC Four television documentary The man who shot Tutankhamun (Wavelength Films). Interview about the Howard Carter archive in the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08h99sb.
2014 BBC Radio 4 Front Row. Interview about the Ashmolean Museum’s temporary exhibition Discovering Tutankhamun. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b049yqzg (Time stamp: 21:22).
2011 BBC Radio 4 Front Row. Interview about the opening of the Ashmolean Museum’s new galleries for ancient Egypt and Sudan. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017chqd (Time stamp 22:45).

Featured publications

Keywords

archaeology, archives, curation, decolonisation, excavations, material, museums, technologies of making, urbanisation, Egyptology, ancient Egyptian art, fieldwork, object distribution, history of collections, earlier prehistory, later prehistory, Predynastic Egypt, Early Dynastic Egypt, Dynastic Egypt, Africa, Egypt, Sudan, Nubia