#  About 

 



##  Welcome to the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard (SoHP) 

 

 

 

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   ![Simonburn: Housesteads Roman Fort, Civilian Settlement, South Gate • Tillman2007, Wikimedia Commons, 2024](/sites/g/files/omnuum9311/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2025-05/Roman_Fort_Civilian_Settlement_Simonburn_UK.jpg?itok=QsjhbP2l) 

 

Roman Fort, Civilian Settlement near Simonborn, UK • Tillman2007, Wikimedia Commons 2024We are a supra-departmental, cross-divisional and inter-school network that brings historians, archaeologists and other scholars together with scientists to chart bold new answers to the age-old question: what is history? Synthesizing the **liberal arts** and the **sciences**, SoHP serves as a center for scholarly programming and innovative new courses and fosters a network of new research collaborations across departments and disciplines.   
  
The[ **Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for Archaeoscience**](https://www.archaeoscience.org/) is one pillar of the new intellectual ecosystem emerging from cascading archaeoscientific advances and these collaborations. We hope to develop a certificate program and/or an undergraduate major or minor as well as postgraduate degree programs that will attract students interested in redrawing the map of the human past with the tools of 21st-century science and history, archaeology, and all the liberal arts.

### [Our Mission](https://sohp.fas.harvard.edu/pages/our_mission)

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[Related Projects](https://sohp.fas.harvard.edu/projects)