The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research serves as an interdisciplinary hub aiming to provide a shared intellectual home for archaeologists at Cambridge with a programme of seminars, workshops, conferences, publications and research grants as well as laboratory space for a wide range of archaeological research which crosses continents, periods and approaches in its exploration of the diversity of the human past. It produces the Cambridge Archaeological Journal and publishes peer-reviewed books of the highest quality across a range of subjects in the form of fieldwork monographs (McDonald Monographs) and thematic edited volumes (McDonald Conversations).

The Institute provides an intellectual base for archaeologists at Cambridge:

• as a research facilitator of the Department of Archaeology, supporting the work of Department staff, postdoctoral fellows and students;
• as an interdisciplinary centre for archaeology in Collegiate Cambridge, serving staff in a variety of divisions, faculties, museums and colleges;
• as a postdoctoral research institute within the Department of Archaeology. In this role the Institute independently supports archaeological fieldwork, other archaeological research, research fellows, visiting scholars, conferences and publications.