Serious archaeology

I took my first degree at UCL Institute of Archaeology (then an independent institute), and worked for a PhD there: I didn’t complete it, but did publish the results in some detail. In 1979 I moved from London to Wiltshire to be curator of the Alexander Keiller Museum in Avebury. While at the museum I directed small excavations at both Avebury and Stonehenge, and years later another dig at Avebury when I was writing Hengeworld (it was also then that I found the “lost” hoard of ancient human remains in the London Natural History Museum, including the skeleton of a beheaded Anglo-Saxon man from Stonehenge and Avebury’s “barber-surgeon” – all told in the book). Though I have worked primarily as a small publisher, restaurateur and  journalist since leaving the museum in 1984, I continue to enjoy original archaeological research. I was part of the team that re-excavated Aubrey Hole 7 at Stonehenge in 2008, fulfilling a long ambition to see the human remains from the site properly studied and appreciated.

You can view archaeology posts here.

Select archaeological bibliography

A year at Stonehenge. Antiquity 83, 184–94 (2009)

A photo by Bill Brandt, and the intimacy of perceptions of Stonehenge and landscape. Landscapes 9, 1–27 (2008)

Stonehenge. In Gaimster, D, McCarthy, S & Nurse, B (eds) Making History: Antiquaries in Britain 1707–2007 (London: Royal Academy of Arts), 227–31 (2007)

Don’t knock the ancestors. Antiquity 77, 172–8 (2003)

An Anglo-Saxon decapitation and burial at Stonehenge (with Alex Bayliss, Jacqueline McKinley, Anthea Boylston, Paul Budd, Jane Evans, Carolyn Chenery, Andrew Reynolds & Sarah Semple). Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine 95, 131–46 (2002)

Excavating the Sanctuary: new investigations on Overton Hill, Avebury. Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine 94, 1–23 (2001)

Hengeworld (2nd ed). Arrow (2001)

Hengeworld. Century (2000)

 

Fairweather Eden. Life in Britain half a million years ago as revealed by the excavations at Boxgrove. Century (with M Roberts, 1997)

The vicar’s dewpond, the National Trust shop and the rise of paganism. In Evans, DM, Salway, P & Thackray, D (eds) “The Remains of Distant Times” (London: Boydell Press), 116–31 (1996)

The stone axe in neolithic Britain. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 61, 311–71 (1996)

Manifesto for a green Archaeology. In All Natural Things: Archaeology & the Green Debate, ed L Macinnes & CR Wickham-Jones (Oxbow Monograph 21), 203–13 (1992)

The development and date of Avebury. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 203–12 (with A Whittle, 1992)

What future for Avebury? Antiquity 64, 259–74 (1990)

 

An excavation at Avebury, Wiltshire, 1982. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 51, 305–10 (with JG Evans & D Williams, 1985)

Procurement and use of flint and chert [at Cherhill, Wilts]. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 49, 72–84 (1983)

On the road to Stonehenge: report on investigations beside the A344 in 1968, 1979 and 1980. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 48, 75–132 (1982)

Stones, pits and Stonehenge. Nature 290, 46-47 (1981)

Later Stone Implements. Shire Publications, Aylesbury (1980)

 

Some aspects of change in flaked stone industries of the mesolithic and neolithic in southern Britain. Journal of Archaeological Science 6, 163–77 (with R M Jacobi, 1979)

Hides and antlers: a new look at the gatherer-hunter site at Star Carr, North Yorkshire, England. World Archaeology 11, 32–42 (1979)

On the shape of waste flakes as an index of technological change in lithic industries. Journal of Archaeological Science 5, 17–37 (1978)

The excavation of an iron age settlement at North Bersted, Bognor Regis, West Sussex, 1975-76. Sussex Archaeological Collections 116, 293–346 (with O Bedwin, 1978)

Footprints on the sands of time. Antiquity 52, 60 (1978)