Thomas Hardy: Archaeology and the Jurassic Landscape | Mark Damon Chutter
Join Mark Damon Chutter, Chair and Academic Director of the Thomas Hardy Society, for an illuminating talk that explores Thomas Hardy’s fiction and poetry in the context of archaeology, deep time, and the Dorset Jurassic landscape. Hardy’s writing is profoundly shaped by the physical and historical layers of the land he inhabited, where traces of ancient civilisations, forgotten lives, and prehistoric worlds lie just beneath the surface.
Archaeology and history are threaded throughout Hardy’s poetry and prose, informing his distinctive approach to characterisation and narrative structure. His work repeatedly reveals how the past endures within the present, shaping identity, memory, and fate. From burial mounds and ruined churches to fossil-rich cliffs and ancient trackways, Hardy’s landscapes act as repositories of human and geological history, mirroring the emotional and moral complexities of his characters.
This talk will examine how Hardy’s archaeological imagination deepens our understanding of time, place, and continuity, and how the Jurassic landscape of Dorset becomes a powerful framework through which Hardy negotiates themes of loss, endurance, and change. A richly interdisciplinary discussion, this talk will appeal to readers of Hardy, students of literature and history, and anyone interested in the enduring dialogue between landscape, archaeology, and the written word.
Mark Damon Chutter is the Chairman and Academic Director of the Thomas Hardy Society. He has published papers in the Thomas Hardy Journal and for the Times Educational Supplement (TES). He has been teaching for over 30 years as a Drama and English specialist and was shortlisted for the TES’s ‘Most Innovative Teacher of the Year’ and ‘Teacher of the Year’ awards.
Mark’s interest and scholarship in Hardy started when he was a teenager as his Grandmother lived in Fordington Old Vicarage – the former residence of the Moule family.
