Dr Miles Russell | |
---|---|
Born | Miles Anton Russell 8 April 1967 |
Nationality | British |
Known for | Time Team Duropolis Piltdown hoax resolution |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | UCL Institute of Archaeology Bournemouth University |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Archaeology |
Sub-discipline | Prehistoric archaeology Roman archaeology |
Institutions | UCL Field Archaeology Unit Oxford Archaeological Unit Bournemouth University |
Miles Russell, FSA (born 8 April 1967) is a British archaeologist best known for his work and publications on the prehistoric and Roman periods and for his appearances in television programmes such as Time Team and Harry Hill's TV Burp . [1]
Russell was born and educated in Brighton,and in 1993 moved to Bournemouth,where he has lectured at Bournemouth University and,since 2009,has worked on the Duropolis "Big Dig",part of the Durotriges Project,with co-directors Paul Cheetham and Harry Manley. He has written 15 books, [2] covering the Neolithic and Roman periods and has appeared numerous times on television,most notably in the Channel 4 television series Time Team alongside presenter Tony Robinson. He has also been a frequent contributor to Digging for Britain ,presented by Dr Alice Roberts. [3]
As a graduate of the Institute of Archaeology,University College London,he subsequently worked as a field officer for UCL's Field Archaeology Unit and a Project Manager for the Oxford Archaeological Unit. In 1993 he joined the staff of Bournemouth University,where he is a senior lecturer,subsequently conducting fieldwork on various projects across southern England,Wales,Scotland,the Isle of Man,Sicily,Germany and Russia. [4] He obtained his PhD from Bournemouth University,on the Neolithic monumental architecture of the South Downs in 2000 and became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2006. He is director of Regnum:the First Kingdom [5] and co-director of the Durotriges Project, [6] both investigating the transition from the Iron Age to Roman period as well as co-ordinating projects into Neolithic Flint Mines, [7] Piltdown Man, [8] The ‘Face’of Roman Britain [9] and the Lost voices of Celtic Britain. [10]
Russell organised and chaired the session 'When Worlds Collide:Archaeology and Science Fiction' at the 1997 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference held at Bournemouth University. Author Douglas Adams,who had been invited to attend,wrote the preface to the book 'Digging Holes in Popular Culture' published by Oxbow Books in 2002 which derived from the conference. [11]
In 2003 Russell published the results of a three-year project investigating the Piltdown Man hoax which strongly implied that the perpetrator of the fraud was the 'finder' Charles Dawson. In 2008 he co-directed excavations within Stonehenge,together with Professor Tim Darvill and Professor Geoffrey Wainwright. In 2013 Russell and colleague Harry Manley identified a fragment of a Roman statue,previously known as the "Bosham Head",as representing the Emperor Trajan. [12] Russell and Manley have also identified a damaged statue of the young emperor Nero from Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex and have tentatively identified a Roman statue held at Petworth House as also being a representation of the Emperor Nero. [13]
In 2017 Russell published the first results from the Lost Voices of Celtic Britain Project,reassessing the archaeological content of the 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. [14] A forensic examination of Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae has demonstrated the text was compiled from a variety of early British sources,including oral folklore,king-lists,dynastic tables and bardic praise poems,some of which date back to the first century BC. [15] In deconstructing Geoffrey’s text,Russell has argued that the origins of King Arthur emerge as a composite ‘Celtic Superhero’created by Geoffrey from five separate characters. [16] [17]
Books
Articles [19]
Fishbourne Roman Palace or Fishbourne Villa is in the village of Fishbourne, near Chichester in West Sussex. The palace is the largest known Roman residence north of the Alps, and has an unusually early date of 75 AD, around thirty years after the Roman conquest of Britain.
The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains were still broadly accepted for many years, and the falsity of the hoax was only definitively demonstrated in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson was responsible for the fraudulent evidence.
Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hillfort 1.6 mi (2.6 km) southwest of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset. Hill forts were fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age.
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.
The Regni were a Celtic tribe or group of tribes living in Britain prior to the Roman Conquest, and later a civitas or canton of Roman Britain. They lived in what is now Sussex, as well as small parts of Hampshire, Surrey and Kent, with their tribal heartland at Noviomagus Reginorum.
The Durotriges were one of the Celtic tribes living in Britain prior to the Roman invasion. The tribe lived in modern Dorset, south Wiltshire, south Somerset and Devon east of the River Axe and the discovery of an Iron Age hoard in 2009 at Shalfleet, Isle of Wight gives evidence that they may also have lived in the western half of the island. After the Roman conquest, their main civitates, or settlement-centred administrative units, were Durnovaria and Lindinis. Their territory was bordered to the west by the Dumnonii; and to the east by the Belgae.
Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus was a 1st-century king of the Regni or Regnenses tribe in early Roman Britain.
Combe Hill is a causewayed enclosure, near Eastbourne in East Sussex, on the northern edge of the South Downs. It consists of an inner circuit of ditches and banks, incomplete where it meets a steep slope on its north side, and the remains of an outer circuit. 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. The historian Hadrian Allcroft included the site in his 1908 book Earthwork of England, and in 1930 E. Cecil Curwen listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a paper which attempted to provide the first list of all the causewayed enclosures in England.
Hod Hill is a large hill fort in the Blackmore Vale, 3 miles (5 km) north-west of Blandford Forum, Dorset, England. The fort sits on a 143 m (469 ft) chalk hill of the same name that lies between the adjacent Dorset Downs and Cranborne Chase. The hill fort at Hambledon Hill is just to the north. The name probably comes from Old English "hod", meaning a shelter, though "hod" could also mean "hood", referring to the shape of the hill.
Cissbury Ring is an 84.2-hectare (208-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of Worthing in West Sussex. It is owned by the National Trust and is designated a Scheduled monument for its Neolithic flint mine and Iron Age hillfort.
John Henry Pull was an amateur archaeologist. After service as a soldier in World War I, where he learnt surveying skills, he worked as a gramophone salesman, a postman, and later a security guard, but his main interest was always archaeology. He was a key member of the Worthing Archaeological Society. He was responsible for the finding and excavation of some of the most important neolithic sites in Southern Britain including the flint mines at Blackpatch, Harrow Hill, Church Hill, Cissbury in Sussex, England, in 1922. Because he was not a professional archaeologist, he was unpopular with some of the experts in the field at the time, who constantly shrugged off Pull's work as amateur and unimportant.
Charles Dawson was a British amateur archaeologist who claimed to have made a number of archaeological and palaeontological discoveries that were later exposed as frauds. These forgeries included the Piltdown Man, a unique set of bones that he claimed to have found in 1912 in Sussex. Many technological methods such as fluorine testing indicate that this discovery was a hoax, and Dawson, the only one with the skill and knowledge to generate this forgery, was a major suspect.
C. Joshua Pollard is a British archaeologist who is a professor of archaeology at the University of Southampton. He gained his BA and PhD in archaeology from the Cardiff University, and is a specialist in the archaeology of the Neolithic period in the UK and north-west Europe, especially in relation to the study of depositional practices, monumentality, and landscape. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England. It was built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. 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. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.
Worthing is a large seaside town in Sussex, England in the United Kingdom. The history of the area begins in Prehistoric times and the present importance of the town dates from the 19th century.
John Manley is a British archaeologist and author. His book AD 43, published by Tempus in 2002, is the first to give serious consideration to the archaeological evidence for the Roman invasion of Britain having taken place via alternative routes.
Timothy Darvill was an English archaeologist and author, best known for his publications on prehistoric Britain and his excavations in England, Wales, and the Isle of Man. He was Professor of Archaeology in the Faculty of Science and Technology Bournemouth University in England. In April 2008 he co-directed excavations within Stonehenge, together with Geoffrey Wainwright and Miles Russell, to examine the early stone structures on the site. The work featured heavily in a BBC Timewatch programme which examined the theory that Stonehenge was a prehistoric centre of healing. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to archaeology.
Whitehawk Camp is the remains of a causewayed enclosure on Whitehawk Hill near Brighton, East Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures are a form of early Neolithic earthwork that were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC, 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, or meeting places, or ritual sites. The Whitehawk site consists of four roughly concentric circular ditches, with banks of earth along the interior of the ditches evident in some places. There may have been a timber palisade on top of the banks. Outside the outermost circuit there are at least two more ditches, one of which is thought from radiocarbon evidence to date to the Bronze Age, about two thousand years after the earliest dated activity at the site.
Duropolis is the name of an archaeological site at Winterborne Kingston in the English county of Dorset, believed to be the remains of the first planned town in Britain. The site's first discoveries were made in 2008 led by co-directors Miles Russell and Paul Cheetham. The 32,000 square metres (340,000 sq ft) Iron Age settlement is believed to date to around 100 BCE, making it 70 years older than the Roman town of Silchester.
Derek Pitman is a British archaeologist, lecturer, presenter, and head of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Bournemouth University, specialised in ancient metallurgy and geophysical prospection.