Ancient Britons & the Antiquarian Imagination: Ideas from the Renaissance to the Regency

by Stuart Piggott

First edition. The story of how antiquarians from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries sought to construct a picture of Britain's ancient past. Center stage are the antiquaries themselves, including William Camden, John Aubrey, and William Stukely, as well as Sir Robert Sibbald, who sketched flint arrowheads and believed they were elf-bolts from the skies. Emphasis is also given to the accurate recording of field monuments and artifacts such as the 1695 edition of Camden's Britannia, an intellectual highpoint of these early studies. The author had previously written The Druids 1985 and William Stukely revised, 1985 . With fifty illustrations. 175+ 1 pages. paper-covered boards, dust jacket. 8vo..

Genres: History

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

Stuart Ernest Piggott, CBE, FBA, FSA, FRSE FSA Scot was an English archaeologist, best known for his work on prehistoric Wessex.

Piggott was born in Petersfield, Hampshire, the son of G. H. O. Piggott, and was educated there at Churcher's College. On leaving school in 1927 he took up a post as assistant at Reading Museum, where he developed an expertise in Neolithic pottery.

In 1928 he joined the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and spent the next five years producing a revolutionary study of the site of Butser Hill, near Petersfield. He also worked with Eliot Cecil Curwen on their excavations at The Trundle causewayed enclosure in Sussex.

Still without any formal archaeological qualification, Piggott enrolled at Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler's Institute of Archaeology, London, taking his diploma in 1936. In 1937 he published another seminal paper, The Early Bronze Age in Wessex.

In 1958 Piggott published a survey of Scottish prehistory, Scotland before History, and in 1959 a popular introductory volume, Approach to Archaeology.