ABOUT ME

I was born in 1951 in Manchester, England. My permanent residence is in the north-east of England where I have lived since 1974.

I have an Honours degree in Latin and Archaeology from the University of Birmingham, England. I have a Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Arabic and an M.A. in Arabic-English Translation from the University of Durham, England. I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Head of Mission for the Society for Libyan Studies, London.

After graduating I served my time as an excavator for several years before becoming a researcher in the Department of Archaeology at Newcastle University. Subsequently, I was the Curator, for English Heritage, of the museums at Corbridge, Chesters and Housesteads on Hadrian’s Wall, and then the Director of the Archaeological Practice, the archaeological contract unit at Newcastle University until 2002. I currently work as a consultant.

Within these bare bones, the two most formative events of my professional career were:

Going to Libya, in 1972, to work on the excavation of the Hellenistic and Roman city of Berenice, in modern Benghazi.

Suddenly developing an interest in Roman pottery (isn’t life strange!), on an excavation in Lancaster in 1973, and then, in the next year, becoming research assistant to John Gillam (the leading authority until his death in 1985, on Roman coarse pottery in northern Britain).

These two events defined the starting points of what have turned out to be my major research themes:

• The archaeology and history of North Africa, particularly that of Tunisia and Libya.
• Archaeological ceramics (mostly of the Roman period but with occasional excursions into the Neolithic and the Islamic).
• The archaeology of the Hadrian’s Wall area in northern England.

In addition, as a result of working in Libya, Tunisia and the Mediterranean, and of being the Director of the Archaeological Contract Unit at Newcastle University, between 1995 and 2002, I have a great deal of experience of

• The mitigation of development impact on the archaeological heritage both in the UK and in oil-industry related contexts in North Africa.
• Archaeological project management in both research and mitigation contexts.
• The organisation and management of archaeological field-projects.