Richard John Copland Atkinson CBE (22 January 1920 – 10 October 1994[1]) was a British prehistorian and archaeologist.
He was born in Evershot, Dorset and went to Sherborne School and then Magdalen College, Oxford, reading PPE. During the Second World War his Quaker beliefs meant that he was a conscientious objector; in 1944 he became Assistant Keeper of Archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum. He also produced a theory on the creation of Stonehenge. He investigated sites including Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow and Wayland's Smithy, and was a friend and collaborator of Stuart Piggott and John F.S. Stone. His Silbury work was part of an aborted BBC documentary series on the monument. In 1949 he was appointed a lecturer at EdinbRichard John Copland Atkinson CBE (22 January 1920 – 10 October 1994[1]) was a British prehistorian and archaeologist.
He was born in Evershot, Dorset and went to Sherborne School and then Magdalen College, Oxford, reading PPE. During the Second World War his Quaker beliefs meant that he was a conscientious objector; in 1944 he became Assistant Keeper of Archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum. He also produced a theory on the creation of Stonehenge. He investigated sites including Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow and Wayland's Smithy, and was a friend and collaborator of Stuart Piggott and John F.S. Stone. His Silbury work was part of an aborted BBC documentary series on the monument. In 1949 he was appointed a lecturer at Edinburgh University, and in 1958 moved to University College, Cardiff to become its first professor of archeology. He remained at Cardiff until he retired in 1983. He served on the University Grants Committee. He received the CBE in 1979. Atkinson worked tirelessly to promote and develop science based British archaeology, and was famous for his practical contributions to archaeological technique and his pragmatic solutions to on-site problems, which were listed in the handbook he wrote called Field Archaeology. Professor Richard Atkinson directed excavations at Stonehenge for the Ministry of Works between 1950 and 1964. Unfortunately because of an extremely heavy administrative burden arising from service on many committees throughout his career, including a period as Deputy Principal of University College, Cardiff, the written reports of the excavations at Stonehenge were not complete before serious illness, mainly caused by overwork, forced total retirement. Not only might Atkinson be considered the Father of Modern British Field Archaeology, but he demonstrated that rare gift of professionalism that allowed him to publicly admit when he had made a major professional error in public. Following his devastating critique in Antiquity, vol 40: 159, 1966 pp 212-216 with “Moonshine on Stonehenge”, of Gerald Hawkins 1965 book Stonehenge Decoded, Atkinson reversed his position in the face of intense research by A. Thom and associates, See Journal for the History of Astronomy vol 5 1974, etc. This public retraction resulted from the extensive survey results of megalithic monuments and their alignments throughout Great Britain and Brittany that were published in a number of journals. English Heritage holds Atkinson's collection of over 2,000 record photographs in its public archive the National Monuments Record. A selection of around 200 photographs can be viewed online on the ViewFinder website.[1]
Sign in with Facebook
