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
We are back into
the season of lecturing again. Professor Mick Aston arrived in
Weston-Super-Mare through a snow storm on 12 January to talk to the local archaeological
society on Early Monasteries in North Somerset.
Mick is a long-time supporter of the Young Archaeologists Club (see Mick's Good Causes) and last November took the opportunity of a visit to Leicester University to meet with young archaeologists. Mick talked to them about his career in archaeology, his influences and his role with Channel 4’s Time Team. Mick and his old friend James Bond gave a joint lecture on the history of Evesham Abbey on 29 October 2009 at the Arts Centre in Evesham. The event was sold out.
However Mick is increasingly disinclined to lecture these days. He has been tapering off for a year or two and this season looks like his last. His warm and entertaining style, and gift for bringing the past alive has made him much sought-after as a lecturer for decades. But by taking those gifts first to radio and then to television, he has been able to reach millions who might never have had the chance to hear him in person.
In November 2009 Prof. Aston returned to radio. He was on Radio 4's Open Country programme, retelling the story of the alabaster disaster from Mick's Travels in the current issue of British Archaeology on 21 November at 06.07 and 26 November at 15.00. Catch up at the time of your choice on BBC iPlayer.
Mick explained to the Guardian why he loves digging around in the dirt, and how he got into archaeology. The interview appeared in a section devoted to archaeology on Friday 28 August.
Mick went to see how the building of the new Museum of Somerset is shaping up. He has been a strong supporter of the project.
Time Team
Series 17 has been filmed this year and will be shown on Channel 4 from the New Year. Mick will once again appear in eight out of the 13 programmes. (This leaves him more time for travel and writing.) 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. He will also appear in a Time Team Special on the Vikings. Filming it gave him the opportunity to return to York and Orkney. He shares his experiences in the latest Mick's Travels piece in British Archaeology.
Next year he will join Time Team in filming six of the programmes for series 18.
Scholarly publications
Mick's latest paper has appeared in Somerset
Archaeology and Natural History volume 152 (2009). It is his second
paper on Muchelney Abbey. The first was in Somerset Archaeology and
Natural History volume 150 (2007), following his interesting popular
piece on the topic in British Archaeology September 2006. Mick
argued that the abbey originated in a group of hermitages on islands in the
marsh. Paradoxically, as Mick explains in the follow-up paper, such ascetics
could attract such admiration and support, expressed in land grants, that their
once lonely home became a centre of great wealth and influence. Mick
concentrates in this second paper on tracing the endowment of the abbey.
Also in this volume is a shorter contribution by Mick on a surprising find in his home parish of Winscombe. The finder being a fan of Time Team, he suspected it to be a polished stone adze and took it to be identified. Great was the surprise of experts. The item seemed to be from Polynesia. Perhaps it belonged to a school collection at one time. Mick's interest in his home parish was displayed in Somerset Archaeology and Natural History volume 151 (2008). He explored its origins in a paper written jointly with his long-time colleague at Bristol University, Michael Costen. It expanded considerably on his popular article on the topic in British Archaeology July 2007 (see below under Mick's Travels).
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 Travels
British Archaeology has been carrying a regular contribution from Mick, called Mick's Travels.
The January/February 2010 issue has Mick thinking himself into the shoes of a Viking bent on plunder, as a Time Team Special on the Vikings took him back to Orkney.
In the November/December 2009 issue Mick tells a Staffordshire story. No - not the one that has hit the headlines and the front cover of this issue. His column is guaranteed free of Anglo-Saxon gold fever. Instead he pursues his regular enthusiasm for hermits and early monasteries, which somehow leads to the lost medieval industry of alabaster mining, which takes him by winding ways to a nasty own goal by the RAF.
In the September/October 2009 issue Mick enthuses about the island of Tiree, in the Inner Hebrides, which he had been longing to visit since he learned it had several early monasteries. He finally got the chance in June this year.
In the July/August 2009 issue Mick tackles the industrial landscape of Portland with the aid of his former academic 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.
