Professor Michael Aston was best known as the leading archaeologist (series 1-19) on the popular Channel 4 television series Time Team. He was an Emeritus Professor at Bristol University, and Honorary Professor at Durham, Exeter and Worcester Universities.
Mick Aston 1946-2013
Mick Aston died unexpectedly at his home in Somerset on Sunday night, 23rd/24th June 2013, aged 66. His funeral on 12 July was private.
Mick was best known to the public as the wild-haired, rainbow-jumpered
professor on Time Team. He was its
chief archaeological adviser from the show's inception in 1994. It was Time Team's producer who broke the sad news.
It is with a very heavy heart that we've been informed that our dear
colleague Mick Aston has passed away. Our thoughts are with his family.
On
the Access
Cambridge Archaeology blog Mick's former Time Team colleague Carenza Lewis
commented Principled, intelligent, brave, loyal, warm, humorous and
visionary, I was privileged to have known him for as long as I did. If
humanists had saints, he should be one.
The Guardian reports the shock of Mick's
Time Team colleagues Phil Harding and Francis Prior in
their news coverage. The obituary in the Independent has comments from Sir Tony
Robinson, including: Archaeology is now a subject that tens of thousands of
people enjoy and value, and this is almost solely down to him. I hope he'll
receive belated recognition for that fact. He will be sorely missed by all of
us who worked closely with him over the years.
More4 aired a substantial tribute to Professor Mick Aston on 13 July.
Channel 4's head of factual programming, Ralph Lee, said: We have been
terribly saddened by death of Professor Mick Aston. We are broadcasting a
tribute night, recognising his important contribution to Time Team over the
years, and the key role he played in making archaeology so popular.
Time
Team Executive Producer Philip Clarke said: Mick was a one-off. He was
really irreplaceable as the heart and soul of Time Team. Thousands of people
were not only inspired by him but truly warmed to him and felt they knew him.
He was a television natural whilst professing to have no interest in the
medium. He lived for the thing he loved which was archaeology.
In the More4
tribute itself, fellow members of Time Team remembered him as an enthusiast,
populist, scholar and legend in newly-filmed sections which framed three Time
Team programmes selected to display aspects of his achievement: those at Much
Wenlock, Nether Poppleton and the Isle of Man.
The academic world recalled how Professor Aston shaped the development of landscape archaeology. The Independent has an excellent obituary written by Mick's longtime friend, landscape archaeologist Christopher Dyer. Bristol University offers an appreciation of his life and achievements by Dr Stuart Prior and Professor Mark Horton. Mick's colleague Christopher Gerrard at Durham University provides an affectionate tribute for Antiquity. There is also a rounded obituary in The Telegraph. The Post Hole, a student-run archaeology journal, has memories of Mick from Helen Geake (Time Team and Finds Adviser to the Portable Antiquities Scheme), Mike Heyworth (Director of the Council for British Archaeology), David Hinton (President of the Royal Archaeological Institute) and Bob Croft (Somerset County Archaeologist): Remembering Mick Aston: The man who brought the past to the present.
Although born in the Black Country, and educated
at Birmingham University, Prof. Aston spent most of his life in Somerset, where
he was the first county archaeologist, appointed in 1974. In 1978 he left that
post to become a full-time tutor in local studies at the Oxford University
External Studies Department. Then in 1979 he returned to the West Country as a
tutor in archaeology at the University of Bristol Extra-Mural Department. He
lived and worked in Somerset continuously from then on. He helped to raise
funds for the new Museum of Somerset at Taunton, and then turned his attention
to another museum project. On the memorable date 12.12.12, he signed a petition
backing the £1.7 million bid to redevelop Glastonbury's Somerset Rural Life
Museum. It was a museum dear to his heart. I love this museum and have done
projects of my own here, it's a brilliant place and should be developed further
and further.
Somerset
County Council staff paid tribute to his work and influence in his home
county. He was at one time a trustee of the now-defunct Bath Archaeological
Trust, and also served for 14 years as a trustee of the thriving Cotswold
Archaeology, which also pays tribute to
Mick. Chief Executive Neil Holbrook said Mick had an infectious
enthusiasm for archaeology. The archaeology was always his paramount concern.
He was much less interested in the business side of things. I worked with Mick
on a number of Time Team programmes over the years and my abiding memories are
not of what we filmed on camera, but the chats we had over a glass of wine at
the end of the day.
Large chunks of Mick's life were devoted to projects in Somerset. From 1987 to 1997 he led a thorough study of the parish of Shapwick, which included field-walking, surveys of the buildings and test-pitting, as well as in-depth investigation of a remarkably rich documentary heritage. The result was the most detailed look so far at the development of an English village. Mick was always anxious to ensure that findings of any study make their way into print as soon as possible, and he began publishing reports on Shapwick in 1989, but the final massive report was published in 2007 (see Mick's books). That scholarly work was followed on 28 February 2013 by an account with more popular appeal. Mick Aston and Christopher Gerrard, Interpreting the English Village: Landscape and Community at Shapwick, Glastonbury was published with wonderful full-colour illustrations by Victor Ambrus, familiar from Time Team. There is a sample on the cover.
On the completion of the Shapwick report, Mick and a small team
including his partner Teresa Hall started a second Somerset project - this time
in Mick's home parish of Winscome. Once again test pits were dug. In June 2012
a Neolithic axe (held by Mick in the photo right) was among the finds at a
local school. As a parish of scattered hamlets and multiple ownership, it was
very different from Shapwick, as Mick explains in the interview by Oxbow. Once
again, Mick plunged rapidly into print, contributing annual articles on their
findings to the county archaeological journal and Medieval Settlement Research (see Mick's articles.) It was his intention to spend
only five years on field-work, so he had almost achieved his goals by the time
of his death. The 2013 Conference of the Council for Independent Archaeologists
was originally planned to showcase the work of Mick Aston on the Winscombe
Project. His death removed its keynote speaker, but Teresa Hall and Mick's old
friend James Bond agreed to step into the breach and introduce the conference in
September 2013 in memory of Mick.Teresa assured the audience that Mick's work
lives on. She and the team that Mick built up have continued to dig test pits
to trace the fortunes of the parish.
Current Archaeology no. 274 (7 December 2012) saw the start of Mick's Dig Diary, a column every other month by Prof Aston recording the trials and triumphs of his project. He started by recalling its genesis: An Unexpected Project. He followed up in CA 276 with A green and pleasant parish. Both can be read online. His publication fees went into the project kitty. He had long been a supporter of Current Archaeology, which mourns his loss. Current Archaeology 271 carries an interesting interview with Mick, Mick Aston: an archaeological journey, part of which can be read online.
Mick was a prolific writer of both scholarly and more accessible material.
In recent years British Archaeology
has been carrying a regular contribution from Mick, called Mick's Travels. Among the many enthusiasms
revealed in these chatty pieces was his love of Cornwall, an early
archaeological hunting ground for him in the 1960s. I used to visit Cornwall
a lot. I spent my formative teenage years walking all over western Cornwall
visiting field monuments, making sketch plans and producing drawings of
inscribed memorial stones and crosses.
So it was a pleasure to him to
return there for occasional Time Team digs, as he explained in In
search of Cornish relics, BA, issue 100 (May/June 2008). More recently he
had been able to spend more time in Cornwall and one of hislast
pieces for the magazine returned to the county. Following the sad news, the
magazine has compiled all of his articles from Mick's Travels into a special online issue.
The final installment of Mick's Travels was published in issue 132 of British Archaeology (September/October
2013), together with tributes to him.
Mick also served on the advisory panel of BBC History Magazine, which offers its own obituary.
The news came out in February 2012 that Mick had left Time Team - a decision made in the previous
summer. You can read his comments to The Western Daily Press
online: Professor
Mick Aston quits Time Team over 'dumbing down' row. The March/April 2012
issue of British
Archaeology carried an interview with him, and commentary by the
editor. Mick's retirement from Time
Team triggered the recognition of his lifetime's work by the 2012
British Archaeological Awards. The Lifetime Achievement
Award winner was Professor Mick Aston, for his long-term commitment to
public education and for his support for developing our understanding of past
human behaviour, as well as major personal contributions to archaeological
knowledge and the development of new methodologies. Also the award for Best
Public Presentation of Archaeology went to Time Team series 18 episode 1,
Reservoir Rituals, which was the 200th episode of Time Time and led by Mick.
Since Mick hated going to London, the award was actually presented to him at
home on his birthday, 1 July. After the sad news, CBA director Mike
Heyworth said: It was an honour and a privilege to have an opportunity
to tell him to his face how much he was loved and valued by everyone with an
interest in archaeology all over the world.
Mick had prepared for his own passing. Editor's choice on the letters page of British Archaeology November/December 2012 is a thoughtful plea from him to consider where the personal archives of archaeologists should be deposited. Having passed the age of 65 in July 2011, Mick considered the time ripe to arrange with Somerset county museum and record office to deposit his archive with them. Huge bundles of papers were transferred. Memorabilia of Time Team, such as those famous stripey jumpers, donned to make him instantly identifiable on the programme, were deposited in the museum. He had already published a delightful autobiography: Mick's Archaeology (February 2000; revised edn. 2002), which could scarcely be bettered as a portrait of this remarkable man.
In his will Mick left bequests to causes close to his heart. He left his collection of nearly 2,000 books and 200 box files of pamphlets, offprints and cuttings to the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, a bequest to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society and another to the Society for Medieval Archaeology. He left £8,000 to the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter, which will be used to enhance community engagement with the university's fieldwork, and a similar bequest to Durham University. Mick was an Honorary Visiting Professor at both Universities.
