 In 1990, he took up an academic teaching position at the University of Sheffield, becoming a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries the following year.Chapter one, "Learning from the Dead", opens with an account of a 10th-century Volga Viking funeral from the Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan.Parker Pearson then highlights that funerals and the rites of the dead tell us more about the living in a society rather than the dead themselves.