Independent Researcher

About

I am a free-lance archaeologist and historian. After a first degree in archaeology and MA in English Local History, my  1984 Ph.D thesis was on the landscape history of Gwent in SE Wales. Currently co-editor of the journal Post-Medieval Archaeology, I am also researching the origins of the Saintonge medieval pottery trade and a biography of John de Stratton, a C14 constable of Bordeaux and lord of Landiras in the Gironde. De Stratton was of peasant stock from the deserted village of the same name in Bedfordshire. Both self-funded projects started out from queries on work I was doing in UK heritage/CRM archaeology. My recent publications have included chapters/papers on medieval lordship and early-modern urban history in Gwent (Wales), crossings of the medieval Trent, theory in European post-medieval archaeology and the historical background to the Raunds landscape project (though written a long time ago). Recent paid work has included Welsh medieval and later pottery, glass from various pipelines and finds from Parkes Castle in Eire, Glastonbury Abbey and Haverfordwest Priory in Wales. My main interests are in the combination of historical and archaeological evidence having had a dual training in both disciplines. Being outside the establishment and being poorly paid my speciality is new interpretations based on combining technical re-analysis of documents with an archaeologist's eye for the material and spatial (cheap but clever research); though these usually piss off my employers "by making life more complicated" I have had  a long interest in North American historical archaeology and also have interests in pan European archaeology but especially France and the Low Countries. I see my own work as deeply rooted in a European tradition based on landscape, stratigraphy, history, geography and folk studies.  I am receptive to anthropological approaches but not as a substitute for solid source-based and international knowledge of the period studied.