Francis Pryor | |
---|---|
Born | Francis Manning Marlborough Pryor 13 January 1945 |
Education | Eton College |
Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Occupation(s) | Archaeologist, Prehistorian |
Known for | Flag Fen, Time Team |
Spouse | Maisie Taylor |
Children | 1 |
Francis Manning Marlborough Pryor MBE FSA (born 13 January 1945) is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain. He is best known for his discovery and excavation of Flag Fen, a Bronze Age archaeological site near Peterborough, as well as for his frequent appearances on the Channel 4 television series Time Team . [1] [2]
Born to a Burke's Landed Gentry [3] family, Pryor studied at Eton College before going on to study archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge. With his first wife, Sylvia Page, he moved to Canada, where he worked as a technician at the Royal Ontario Museum for a year before returning to Britain.
He has now retired from full-time field archaeology, but still appears on television and writes books as well as being a working sheep farmer.
Pryor is the son of Barbara Helen Robertson and Robert Matthew Marlborough Pryor MBE TD (known as Matthew), as well as being the grandson of Walter Marlborough Pryor DSO DL JP; both his grandfather and father had been British Army officers, serving in the First and Second World Wars respectively. [3] He was educated at Temple Grove School in East Sussex, then at Eton College alongside his first cousin William Pryor, [4] before studying archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a PhD in 1985.
He married Sylvia in 1969, and migrated with her to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on a landed immigrant scheme. There he started working at the Royal Ontario Museum as technician, working for Doug Tushingham who helped fund Pryor's first project in the United Kingdom. This was at North Elmham in Norfolk, and the excavation was directed by Peter Wade-Martins, who exposed Pryor to the benefit of opening large-area excavations.
Pryor returned to the UK in 1970, where the construction of the new town at Peterborough offered the opportunity to do large scale archaeology ahead of the planned development work. Between 1970 and 1978, he alternated between digs in the UK and writing up the excavation reports and giving presentations on his work in Canada. Pryor and his first wife were divorced in 1977, and during the course of these projects, he met his second wife, Maisie Taylor, an expert in prehistoric wood who later also appeared on Time Team ; they worked together on the series of projects in the Peterborough area, the most famous of which is Flag Fen. He has a daughter, Amy, from his first marriage. He was a founding member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists in 1982.
In 1991, he published his first book about Flag Fen, entitled Flag Fen: Prehistoric Fenland Centre, for a series co-produced by English Heritage and B.T. Batsford. The final monograph on the site – entitled The Flag Fen Basin: Archaeology and environment of a Fenland Landscape– was published in 2001 as an English Heritage Archaeological Report. Pryor followed this with a third book on the site, published by Tempus in 2005; entitled Flag Fen: Life and Death of a Prehistoric Landscape, it represented what he considered to be a "major revision" of his 1991 work, for instance rejecting the earlier "lake village" concept. [5] Pryor was awarded an MBE "for services to tourism" in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours. [6]
Since his retirement from archaeology, Pryor has devoted his time to sheep farming, being the owner of 40 acres of fenland pasture in Lincolnshire. In an interview with the Financial Times , he asserted that through this vocation, he felt a connection with the people of Bronze Age Britain, who also lived off this form of subsistence, before also expressing his opinion that human overpopulation represented a significant threat to the human species, urging people to have fewer children and eat less meat. [7]
One of Pryor's four times great grandfathers is Samuel Hoare, the Quaker and founding member of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.[ citation needed ]
Cambridgeshire is a ceremonial county in the East of England. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Peterborough, and the city of Cambridge is the county town.
Peterborough is a cathedral city in the City of Peterborough district in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. For centuries, the city and many of its surrounding villages formed the Soke of Peterborough, in the historic county of Northamptonshire. The Soke of Peterborough had an independent county council, based in the city, between 1889 and 1965. After the Soke of Peterborough was abolished in 1965, the city formed part of the short-lived Huntingdon and Peterborough until 1974. Though the city has a long history as part of Northamptonshire, the city has been part of Cambridgeshire since 1974, and is the largest settlement in that county.
The Fens or Fenlands in eastern England are a naturally marshy region supporting a rich ecology and numerous species. Most of the fens were drained centuries ago, resulting in a flat, dry, low-lying agricultural region supported by a system of drainage channels and man-made rivers and automated pumping stations. There have been unintended consequences to this reclamation, as the land level has continued to sink and the dykes have been built higher to protect it from flooding.
Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe,, known as Barry Cunliffe, is a British archaeologist and academic. He was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007. Since 2007, he has been an emeritus professor.
Seahenge, also known as Holme I, was a prehistoric monument located in the village of Holme-next-the-Sea, near Old Hunstanton in the English county of Norfolk. A timber circle with an upturned tree root in the centre, Seahenge, along with the nearby timber circle Holme II, was built in the spring-summer of 2049 BC, during the early Bronze Age in Britain. Contemporary theory is that they were used for ritual purposes; in particular Holme II has been interpreted as a mortuary monument that may originally have formed the boundary of a burial mound.
Flag Fen, east of Peterborough, England, is a Bronze Age site which was constructed about 3500 years ago and consists of more than 60,000 timbers arranged in five very long rows, creating a wooden causeway across the wet fenland. Part-way across the structure a small island was formed. Items associated with it have led scholars to conclude that the island was of religious significance. Archaeological work began in 1982 at the site, which is located 800 m east of Fengate. Flag Fen is now part of the Greater Fens Museum Partnership. A visitor centre has been constructed on site and some areas have been reconstructed, including a typical Iron Age roundhouse dwelling.
Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in south-west England. One of the best-known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.
Fenland is a local government district in Cambridgeshire, England. It was historically part of the Isle of Ely. The district covers around 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi) of mostly agricultural land in the extremely flat Fens. The council is based in March. Other towns include Chatteris, Whittlesey and Wisbech.
Whittlesey is a market town and civil parish in the Fenland district of Cambridgeshire, England. Whittlesey is 6 miles (10 km) east of Peterborough. The population of the parish was 17,667 at the 2021 Census.
The Sanctuary was a stone and timber circle near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Excavation has revealed the location of the 58 stone sockets and 62 post-holes. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.
Sir John Grahame Douglas Clark, who often published as J. G. D. Clark, was a British archaeologist who specialised in the study of Mesolithic Europe and palaeoeconomics. He spent most of his career working at the University of Cambridge, where he was appointed Disney Professor of Archaeology from 1952 to 1974 and Master of Peterhouse from 1973 to 1980.
Maxey is a village in the Peterborough unitary authority, in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England, located between Peterborough and Stamford and southwest of The Deepings. It is home to nearly 700 residents.
The Car Dyke was, and to a large extent still is, a long ditch which runs along the western edge of the Fens in eastern England for a distance of over 57 miles (92 km). It is generally accepted as being of Roman age and, for many centuries, to have been taken as marking the western edge of the Fens. The name derives from carr, a fourteenth-century word for marsh or drained land.
Fiskerton is a village and civil parish in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The 2011 Census recorded the population of the civil parish as 1,209. It is about 6 miles (10 km) east of Lincoln, and on the north side of the River Witham.
Timothy William Potter was a prominent archaeologist of ancient Italy, as well as of Roman Britain, best known for his focus on landscape archaeology.
Fengate is a predominantly industrial area of the city of Peterborough, in the Peterborough district, in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. For electoral purposes it forms part of Peterborough East ward. The industrial estate is known as Eastern Industry. Peterborough Power Station is located here.
Etton is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority area of the city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in England. For electoral purposes it forms part of Northborough ward in North West Cambridgeshire constituency. The parish had a population of 158 persons and 58 households in 2001.
DigVentures is a social enterprise organising crowdfunded archaeological excavation experiences. It is registered with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), and is a CIfA Accredited Field School.
Shippea Hill SSSI is a 27.6-hectare (68-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.
Great Wilbraham is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site near the village of Great Wilbraham in Cambridgeshire, England. The enclosure is about 170 metres (560 ft) across, and covers about 2 hectares. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites.