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Robin Bush

The historian Robin Bush died 22 June 2010. Prof. Mick Aston contributed to the obituary published in The Guardian on 7 July:

Mick Aston writes: I first met Robin in 1974, when I moved to Somerset to be an archaeologist in the planning department. He was a great character, a real bon vivant. Robin was assistant editor on the Victoria County History of Somerset at the time. I lived around the corner from the record office in Taunton, so would often bump into him on one of his many cigarette breaks. He smoked like a trooper. We were both interested in the town's medieval layout and worked together on a piece for The Archaeology of Taunton (1984), a great volume edited by Peter Leach.

When we put together Time Team, I had a shopping list of people I thought I'd need. Robin was the only candidate for historian. He was so over-the-top, such a good thespian, that he was great on TV. Historians on television can be as dull as ditchwater, but not Robin. Time Team fans have never really got over him leaving the show.

Durham University

Prof. Mick Aston received an Honorary Degree from Durham University on 2nd July 2010. He was made a Doctor of Letters. Mick took the opportunity to visit the excavation of the Roman fort of Binchester (Co. Durham).

Time Team

Series 17 was filmed in 2009. The first six programmes have been shown on Channel 4, starting Sunday 18 April 2010 at 17:30 with a search for a lost sacristy in Westminster Abbey and finishing on 23 May 2010 with the search for an entire lost Roman town. This year there are bonus videos available on the revamped Channel 4 pages for Time Team. The one for Westminster included a cameo of stained glass-making, which was crowded out of the programme. The remaining seven programmes will be shown in the autumn.

You will see Mick once again 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.

During 2010 he will join Time Team in filming six of the programmes for series 18. The Team recently had a succesful dig near Leicester.

Time Team goes from strength to strength overseas. The back catalogue of programmes seems to be constantly showing on one channel or another here and in dozens of other countries. In addition the format has been adapted to other countries , with their own teams of archaeologists. PBS showed the first series of Time Team America last summer. Now a Spanish version is in production.

Worcester

On Saturday 1 May Mick opened a new Heritage Trail through Northwick and Bevere. The circular walk, which winds along existing rights of way, is lined with interpretation panels and reconstruction drawings that show the archaeology, history and wildlife of the area.

Taunton

Taunton's Heritage Week roped in Prof. Aston to answer people’s archaeological questions on 25 February at an empty shop in the High Street. A while ago Mick went to see how the building of the new Museum of Somerset in Taunton Castle is shaping up. He has been a strong supporter of the project. The Museum of Somerset is due to open in 2011.

Winter talks

Over the years during which Time Team has taken up much of his time from March to October, Professor Mick Aston has generally fitted talks around the country into the winter months. He 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.

On 20 November he was at Leicester University to talk to the Centre for English Local History on his long-running project on the landscape history of the village of Shapwick in Somerset. Mick is a long-time supporter of the Young Archaeologists Club (see Mick's Good Causes). So he took the opportunity to meet with young archaeologists in Leicester. 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 on 21 November at 06.07 and 26 November at 15.00 retelling the story of the alabaster disaster from Mick's Travels in the November/December 2009 issue of British Archaeology. Catch up at the time of your choice on BBC iPlayer.

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.

In the July/August 2010 issue Mick Aston revisits Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, where, in July 1970, he started his "first proper paid job", as a field officer based in the City and County Museum in Woodstock.

In the May/June 2010 issue Mick is out and about in the Kintyre peninsula, looking for early Christian chapels and mysterious carvings, and visiting Kilmartin Museum nearby.

In the March/April 2010 issue Mick dissects the evolution of Portsmouth. It's good to see him return to the topic of town development. The Prof. was in Portsmouth last year with Time Team, looking at the remains of a medieval hospital, but he took the opportunity to explore the town's naval history.

The January/February 2010 issue had 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 2009.

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.

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