Professor Michael Aston is best known as the leading archaeologist on thepopular Channel 4 television series Time Team. He is an Emeritus Professor at Bristol University, and Honorary Visiting Professor at Durham and Exeter Universities.
News
Mick has been back to school and it looks like fun. St Julian's Church School, Wellow, joined Camerton School to host a history day in early February 2012 with pupils and staff dressing as historical characters. Professor Mick Aston visited the school with his assistant Teresa Hall and declared himself amazed by the costumes and the research the children had put into their characters. You see him here admiring the ceramic tile time line made by the pupils with the help of ceramic artist Bethan Sheff.
Winscombe and Sandford Archaeological Survey Project
Now that Professor Aston's long-term project on the parish of Shapwick, Somerset, has concluded with the publication of a massive (and warmly-reviewed) monograph, he has turned his attention to his home parish of Winscombe. Mick has explored its history with the help of local historians. Maps of different dates have been compared to give a sense of the changing landscape. Local people have been encouraged to bring forward finds; many responded. The digging of test pits began in 2010. The aim is to dig 500 across the parish. Mick and his cohort were in evidence at the Winscombe May Fair this year, and actually demonstrated digging a test pit at the Michaelmas Fair 2011. The test pit team ordered a delightful cake for Mick's 65th birthday on 1 July, depicting a test pit, with Mick lying down on the job. Thanks to Teresa, it is featured on the Letters page of the September issue of Current Archaeology.
Mick is hugely enjoying this plunge under the surface of familiar terrain.The project is not intended to be as intensive as the study of Shapwick, but will draw on lessons learned there. It is intended to run for five years, with a report on it every year published in Somerset Archaeology and Natural History. See the list of Mick's scholarly papers for what is already in print. Mick has not been letting the grass grow under his feet! He has also given talks on the topic. Prof. Aston presented a public seminar at the Centre for English Local History at Leicester University on Thursday 6 October 2011 on ‘The Winscombe Project, Somerset: The why and how of a local study’.Mick has become the honorary president of the Friends of St James the Great
in Winscombe. The group was formed to help preserve and maintain the
church,which is thought to have been built in the 15th century on the site of
older churches and is the only Grade I-listed building in the parish. Professor
Aston and guest speaker Teresa Hall held a sold-out illustrated talk entitled
The Early Church and Winscombe
on November 13 2010 at St James’s
church hall.Â
Time Team
Time Team series 19 was filmed in 2011 and will be shown on Channel 4 on Sundays, starting 22 January 2012 at 18.00 hours. Mick will appear in six of the programmes.Â
Uphill walk
In support of the Churches Conservation Trust, Mick enthuses about a favourite walk through Uphill, Somerset. If you want to follow in his footsteps, you can download the details of the walk with a map, to print out from pdf.
Time Signs Online
Before the enormously popular Time
Team, Tim Taylor first collaborated with Mick Aston in making the
four-part series Time Signs, broadcast
in 1991. The series followed the exploration of the Wolf Valley in Devon,before
it was flooded to create the Roadford Reservoir. The evacuation of its farming
families gave the archaeologists a free hand. The series has been made available at YouTube by
4oD Documentaries (Channel 4 On Demand).Â
Mick's Travels
In recent years British Archaeology has been carrying a regular contribution from Mick, called Mick's Travels.
In the depths of the British winter Mick looks back on his summer holiday in Brittany in the January/February 2012 issue. He was in search of evidence of the early Church, from Christianised Roman buildings to Romanesque churches, with shrines and holy wells along the way.
In the November/December 2011 issue, Mick finds the story of the de Vere
family in the Essex landscape.
Mick pays tribute to the life and work of the late Philip Rahtz in the September/October 2011 issue.
For his contribution to older issues, see Mick's articles.