Colin B Burgess (1938–2014) was an archaeologist specializing in the
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
, especially in the north east of England and the Mediterranean.
Biography
Originally from
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, Burgess studied at
Cardiff University
Cardiff University () is a public research university in Cardiff, Wales. It was established in 1883 as the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire and became a founding college of the University of Wales in 1893. It was renamed Unive ...
, where he wrote an undergraduate dissertation on bronze-age metalwork from the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...
.
For most of his career, he worked at
Newcastle University
Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a mem ...
, where he focused on the archaeology of north east of England, and formed relationships with both amateur archaeologists and international scholars.
Sometime in or after the 1980s, Burgess moved to France, having grown "disillusioned" with trends in British archaeology.
(This disillusionment is expressed most forcefully in a note published in the 2001 reissue of his textbook, ''The Age of Stonehenge''.) In this period he was particularly interested in the archaeology of
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...
.
He returned to England for medical treatment towards the end of his life.
Contributions
In the 1960s, Burgess developed a scheme for Bronze Age chronology that is still in use today.
He established the
Bronze Age Studies Group, and international group of scholars that first met in 1976, and continued to meet as late as 2016.
Building on his undergraduate dissertation, his 1988 work, written with I. A. Colquhoun, ''The swords of Britain,'' catalogs over 800 examples of Bronze Age swords. Burgess and Colquhoun use methods from
experimental archaeology
Experimental archaeology (also called experiment archaeology) is a field of study which attempts to generate and test archaeological Hypothesis, hypotheses, usually by replicating or approximating the feasibility of ancient cultures performing v ...
to suggest that it took three weeks to manufacture a sword, with Bronze Age technology.
[See th]
abstract
of ''The swords of Britain'' at the Archaeology Data Service.
Burgess published on archaeological topics for a full five decades; his last publication appeared in 2012. For a list of publications, see th
Colin B Burgesspage at the
Archaeology Data Service
The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is an open access digital archive for archaeological research outputs. It is located in The King's Manor, at the University of York. Originally intended to curate digital outputs from archaeological researche ...
, as well as th
Hommage
See also
*
Carp's Tongue complex
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burgess, Colin B
1938 births
2014 deaths
20th-century British archaeologists
21st-century archaeologists
Academics of Newcastle University