Mark Chatwin Horton, FSA, (born 15 February 1956) is a British maritime and historical archaeologist, television presenter, and writer.
Mark Chatwin Horton, FSA, (born 15 February 1956) is a British maritime and historical archaeologist, television presenter, and writer.
Horton attended Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating and receiving a doctorate. He is Professor of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage at the Royal Agricultural University [1] in Cirencester, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Bristol. One of his former students is the archaeologist and television presenter Sam Willis. He is part of a project to establish the Cultural Heritage Institute in the former Great Western Railway carriage works at Swindon, offering research and masters training from 2020. [2]
He has conducted excavations in Zanzibar, Egypt, the Caribbean, North America, Central America and France, as well as sites in Britain. His chief publications are on the Swahili site of Shanga, Kenya, [3] between 1980 and 1986 and more recently sites on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, notably Tumbatu, Ras Mkumbuu, Mtambwe Mkuu and Chwaka.
His other excavations include the Scottish Darien scheme (1698–1700) in Panama; the Cistercian Abbey of Grosbot (Charente, France); the Bishop's Palace, Wells, Somerset; a medieval farmstead at Carscliffe, Somerset; Fishmongers Cave, Alveston, Gloucestershire, and he worked at Berkeley Castle (Gloucestershire) and Repton. In 2008-19 he undertook survey and excavation work in the Kherlen Valley in Mongolia. Between 2011 and 2019 he worked with the Sealinks Project, undertaking excavations on Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafia, Anjouan, Sri Lanka and Madagascar. A project in East Pemba combined archaeological investigations with ethnography and anthropology. [4] [5]
He also has an interest in Isambard Kingdom Brunel and directed the digitisation of the engineer's sketch books and letters at Bristol University library, which project was grant-aided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2003. [6]
He is currently Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research & Enterprise at the Royal Agricultural University. [7]
He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 7 May 1992. [8]
Horton's first television appearances sprang from his academic work in East Africa. He contributed to a programme by Time Life Television Lost Civilisations – Africa in 1996 and to a Channel 4 television programme on the Atlantic slave trade in 1998.
He was closely involved in the inception of the long-running Channel 4 television series Time Team and the third episode was filmed in his home town of Much Wenlock, Shropshire, in 1994. He has appeared on several subsequent programmes including Hylton Castle, Sunderland, in 1995, and Aston Eyre, Shropshire, in 1998. [9] In 2000 he acted as tiles specialist on Time Team Live. [10] Having invited Time Team to investigate the bones found by cavers in a cave in the village of Alveston, Gloucestershire, he appeared in the programme on this site shown in 2001. [11] In 2008, further work on the site was included in a National Geographic / Channel Five documentary, Julius Caesar and the Druids. [12]
He was a co-presenter on two series of the BBC Two production, Time Flyers 2002 – 2003. In 2004 he presented BBC Scotland's programme Darien: Disaster in Paradise, which was highly commended in the archaeological film category at that year's British Archaeological Awards.
Between 2005 and 2016 Horton was one of the team of presenters on the programme Coast , exploring the coastline of Britain. [13] [14] He also presents occasional pieces for BBC1 Inside Out, West and South West Regions. [15] He was the archaeological consultant on the TV drama Bonekickers , shown on BBC One in 2008.
In 2017, he appeared in an episode of the Science Channel documentary Mysteries of the Missing (series 1, episode 6), investigating the possible relocation of the 16th-century English settlement of Roanoke colony in Virginia from Roanoke to Croatoan Island. He is a regular contributor and presenter on Science Channel What on Earth? .
Horton is a keen sailor and enjoys dinghy-sailing on the River Severn and restoring his historic 26-foot (7.9 m) yacht Mignonette, a Lone Gull design of Maurice Griffiths built in 1946–47. [16] He lives on the banks of the Severn in a sixteenth-century house associated with Sir Francis Drake. [17]
Zanzibar is an insular semi-autonomous region which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25–50 km (16–31 mi) off the coast of the African mainland, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja and Pemba Island. The capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre, Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.
Time Team is a British television programme that originally aired on Channel 4 from 16 January 1994 to 7 September 2014. It returned in 2022 on online platforms YouTube and Patreon. Created by television producer Tim Taylor and presented by actor Tony Robinson, each episode featured a team of specialists carrying out an archaeological dig over a period of three days, with Robinson explaining the process in lay terms. The specialists changed throughout the programme's run, although it consistently included professional archaeologists such as Mick Aston, Carenza Lewis, Francis Pryor and Phil Harding. The sites excavated ranged in date from the Palaeolithic to the Second World War.
Michael Antony Aston was an English archaeologist who specialised in Early Medieval landscape archaeology. Over the course of his career, he lectured at both the University of Bristol and University of Oxford and published fifteen books on archaeological subjects. A keen populariser of the discipline, Aston was widely known for appearing as the resident academic on the Channel 4 television series Time Team from 1994 to 2011.
Pemba Island is a Tanzanian island forming part of the Zanzibar Archipelago, lying within the Swahili Coast in the Indian Ocean.
Stonetown of Zanzibar, also known as Mji Mkongwe, is the old part of Zanzibar City, the main city of Zanzibar, in Tanzania. The newer portion of the city is known as Ng'ambo, Swahili for 'the other side'. Stone Town is located on the western coast of Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar Archipelago. Former capital of the Zanzibar Sultanate, and flourishing centre of the spice trade as well as the Indian Ocean slave trade in the 19th century, it retained its importance as the main city of Zanzibar during the period of the British protectorate. When Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined each other to form the United Republic of Tanzania, Zanzibar kept a semi-autonomous status, with Stone Town as its local government seat.
The Swahili people comprise mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab and Comorian ethnic groups inhabiting the Swahili coast, an area encompassing the Zanzibar archipelago and mainland Tanzania's seaboard, littoral Kenya, northern Mozambique, the Comoros Islands and Northwest Madagascar.
Miranda Krestovnikoff is a British radio and television presenter specialising in natural history and archaeological programmes. She is an accomplished musician, and also a qualified scuba diver which has led to co-presenting opportunities in programmes with an underwater context.
Pate (Paté) Island is located in the Indian Ocean close to the northern coast of Kenya, to which it belongs. It is the largest island in the Lamu Archipelago, which lie between the towns of Lamu and Kiunga in the former Coast Province. The island is almost completely surrounded by mangroves.
Swahili architecture is a term used to designate a whole range of diverse building traditions practiced or once practiced along the eastern and southeastern coasts of Africa. Rather than simple derivatives of Islamic architecture from the Arabic world, Swahili stone architecture is a distinct local product as a result of evolving social and religious traditions, environmental changes, and urban development.
The Swahili coast is a coastal area of East Africa, bordered by the Indian Ocean and inhabited by the Swahili people. It includes Sofala ; Mombasa, Gede, Pate Island, Lamu, and Malindi ; and Dar es Salaam and Kilwa. In addition, several coastal islands are included in the Swahili coast, such as Zanzibar and Comoros.
Tumbatu is historic Swahili settlement located on Tumbatu Island, Kaskazini A District of Unguja North Region in Tanzania. This site is a significant archaeological site that contains a large number of collapsed coral stone structures including private houses and several mosques, the largest of which is located on the shore facing the village of Mkokotoni on Unguja. Pearce initially looked into the ruins in 1915 and wrote about the mosques, palace, and other stone homes.
Shanga is an archaeological site located in Pate Island off the eastern coast of Africa. The site covers about 15 hectares. Shanga was excavated during an eight-year period in which archaeologists examined Swahili origins. The archaeological evidence in the form of coins, pottery, glass and beads all suggest that a Swahili community inhabited the area during the eighth century. Evidence from the findings also indicates that the site was a Muslim trading community that had networks in Asia.
Maritime archaeology in East Africa spans the range from the horn of Somalia south to Mozambique, and includes the various islands and island chains dotting the map off the coast of Somalia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya. Primary areas along this coast include the Zanzibar, Lamu, and Kilwa Archipelagos. Although East African societies developed nautical capabilities for themselves, most of the maritime artifacts point to external merchants from Mediterranean cultures like Egypt and Greece, Indian and Chinese from South and East Asia in the early stages, to the great European powers during the Ages of Colonization and Imperialism.
Pemba Island is a large coral island off the coast of Tanzania. Inhabited by Bantu settlers from the Tanga coast since 600 AD, the island has a rich trading, agricultural, and religious history that has contributed to the studies of the Swahili Coast trade throughout the Indian Ocean.
Stephanie Wynne-Jones is an Africanist archaeologist, whose research focuses on East African material culture, society and urbanism. She is Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. She previously worked as assistant director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (2005-2008) and remains a Trustee and Member of the BIEA Governing Council. In 2016, Wynne-Jones was elected to Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Wynne-Jones is one of the Core Group at the Danish National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Urban Network Evolutions (Urbnet), Aarhus University. Between 2015 and 2017 she was a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala.
Chantal Radimilahy is an archaeologist and museum curator from Madagascar. She was the first woman from the country to earn a PhD in Archaeology and the first woman to direct the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Antananarivo.
Kuumbi Cave is an archaeological site located in Kusini District, Unguja South Region of Tanzania. It has been important in determining patterns of human occupation since its formation over 20,000 years ago. Unusual lithic and ceramic finds dated within the last 2,000 years make Kuumbi Cave a unique site. Its name in Swahili, Pango la Kuumbi, translates to "Cave of Creation".
The Great British Dig: History in Your Back Garden is a factual television programme about community archaeology, that airs on More 4 and Channel 4, produced by Strawberry Blond TV. Presented by comedian and actor Hugh Dennis along with three archaeological experts, each episode sees the team arrive in a local community somewhere in Britain, and knock on people's doors to ask if they can dig in their gardens and shared spaces.
Sanje ya Kati is protected, uninhabited historic site located on Sanje ya Kati Island in Pande Mikoma ward in Kilwa District in Lindi Region of Tanzania's Indian Ocean coast. The site is home to medieval Swahili ruins that have yet to be fully excavated.
Mtambwe Kuu or Mtambwe Mkuu is a Medieval Swahili historic site located in Chake Chake District of Pemba North Region. A town wall, a mosque, tombs, and residences are among the several stone constructions at the Mtambwe Mkuu site in northwest Pemba. The oldest indications of occupation date from the eleventh century and persisted successfully and unbrokenly until the fifteenth century. It was once again occupied in the nineteenth century. A cache of over 2,000 gold and silver coins from the 10 and eleventh centuries were found during an excavation at the location, demonstrating Pemba's Swahili involvement in the regional trade networks at the time.
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