Professor Michael Aston is best known as the leading archaeologist on the popular Channel 4 television series Time Team. He is an Emeritus Professor at Bristol University, and Honorary Visiting Professor at Durham and Exeter Universities.
News
On 6 March 2009 Mick presented the Dorset
Archaeological Awards.
The winner of the Dorset Archaeological Award 2009, for an outstanding
contribution to archaeology in Dorset, was Dan Carter for his research
into the Verwood Pottery industry. Mick said that these
awards celebrated something close to his heart:Those involved
with
archaeology on TV are not there for the sex, drugs and rock and roll.
It is a way of reaching large audiences and enthusing and educating
them. It’s our prime motivation. These awards do that. I hope they go
on for years and continue to stimulate research in a very
archaeological county.
Mick can be seen in an extraordinary jumper (even for him) supporting Feed the Children's Eat A Breakfast Save A Life Day 2009.
Time Team
Series 17 is now being filmed. Mick will once again be in eight out of the 13 programmes. (This leaves him more time for travel and other things.) He generally chooses to be part of digs which are expected to have a medieval focus, and may decline some purely Roman or prehistoric sites, but it's not a cut-and-dried rule.
Scholarly publications
The impressive Shapwick Project, initiated and led by Mick
Aston, was shortlisted for Best
Archaeological Project in the British Archaeological Awards
2008, and described as A
highly successful exercise in multidisciplinary, archaeological
landscape research with involvement by the local community built into
the project design from day one.
The final scholarly report on this investigation of a parish in
Somerset has been published:
The
Shapwick Project, Somerset: A Rural Landscape Explored edited
by Chris Gerrard and Mick Aston.
Mick's
latest paper has appeared in Somerset
Archaeology and Natural History volume 151 (2008).
It explores the origins of his home parish of Winscombe and
was written jointly with his long-time colleague at
Bristol University, Michael Costen. This expands considerably
on his popular article on the topic in British Archaeology
July 2007 (see below under Mick's Travels). It is the second
of what is intended as a
series of scholarly articles by Mick on Somerset monasteries and
landscape. The
first was on Muchelney Abbey in Somerset Archaeology and
Natural History volume 150 (2007). This follows his
interesting popular piece on the
topic in British Archaeology September 2006.
Mick argues that the
abbey originated in a group of hermitages on islands
in the marsh.
Mick's Travels
British Archaeology has been carrying a regular contribution from Mick, called Mick's Travels.
In the July/August 2009 issue Mick tackles the industrial landscape of Portland with the aid of old colleague Dr Joseph Bettey.
In the May/June 2009 issue Mick goes to Bewcastle.
In the March/April 2009 issue Mick explains his interest in the medieval town planning of Salisbury, where Time Team dug around the cathedral last year. The resulting programme was shown on 8 February 2009.
In the January/February 2009 issue, Mick shows off some of the remarkable remains on Dartmoor, from prehistoric to industrial.
In the November/December 2008 issue Mick Aston goes to Iona, an early centre of Christianity.
In the September/October issue Mick considers the Norman impact in County Durham.
In the July/August issue Mick muses on early monasteries in the Vale of Glamorgan.
In the May/June issue Mick delves into origins of the many places in Cornwall named after local saints.
The March/April issue has Mick wandering in Anglo-Saxon North Mercia, looking at early monastery and minster sites, including the famed Saxon churches at Repton, Derbyshire, and Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire.
In the January/February 2008 issue Mick searches for traces of the Angles in Suffolk. He returns to West Stow, which he first visited nearly 30 years ago, takes a look at the new National Trust visitor centre at Sutton Hoo and tramps around other sites looking for early monasteries and the like.
The November/December 2007 issue had Mick explaining how he combined a Time Team shoot in Barra with a trip of his own, working up the islands of the Outer Hebrides in his camper van.
The September/October issue featured a piece by Mick on the association of Roman forts in County Durham with early churches. He was struck by the link while filming two episodes of Time Team in the area.
The July/August issue came complete with Mick's shortest travel yet. He turns his landscape archaeologist's eye on his oddly-shaped home parish of Winscombe in Somerset.
In the May/June issue he returned to his home territory of the Black Country, visiting Halesowen in the West Midlands (formerly in Worcestershire).
The March/April issue had Mick writing on his visit last year to the Isle of Man.
The January/February 2007 issue featured Mick exploring the border between Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, and discovering the county of Wincombshire, lost as a result of boundary changes in the Middle Ages. His starting point is a visit he made to the Worcestershire Young Archaeologists' Club.
The November/December 2006 issue had a contribution from Mick on Anglesey. Time Team's dig there earlier this year brought back memories; Mick first visited the island in his teens. He reflects on its spectacular array of monuments from prehistoric tombs to medieval churches. The piece has a mass of illustrations, including the impressive aerial shots for which Mick is noted.
September/October 2006 issue had the first of his columns. Given his fascination with early monasteries, it will be no surprise that his first field report was on the estate of Muchelney Abbey in Somerset. Mick delves into the very beginnings of the abbey and the Saxon royal estate that preceded it.
