Mark Roberts | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Roberts using a total station at Boxgrove, 2011. | |
| Born | Mark Brian Roberts 20 May 1961 Chichester, West Sussex, England |
| Occupation(s) | Archaeologist, Prehistorian |
| Known for | Boxgrove Quarry |
Mark Brian Roberts (born 20 May 1961) is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Palaeolithic. He is best known for his discovery of, and subsequent excavations at, the Lower Palaeolithic site of Boxgrove Quarry in southern England. Roberts was a principal research fellow at the UCL Institute of Archaeology.[1] He has twice been awarded the Stopes Medal for his contribution to the study of Palaeolithic humans and Pleistocene geology,[2][3] and in 2021 was made an Honorary Fellow of West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.[4]
Born in Chichester, West Sussex, Roberts developed an interest in geology and archaeology at an early age, working at a series of local excavations before studying at the then-independent Institute of Archaeology in Bloomsbury, London (1980–83).[5] His Boxgrove excavations, which ran from 1983 to 1996, revealed the best preserved Middle Palaeolithic site then known to archaeologists. In 1993, the project unearthed remains belonging to a Homo heidelbergensis, the earliest known hominin in Europe at that time. The results of these excavations were published in numerous articles and two English Heritage-funded monographs (1999 and 2020),[6][7] and Roberts' experience of the excavations explored in the innovative archaeological (auto)biography Fairweather Eden (1998), co-written with fellow Sussex archaeologist Mike Pitts.[5][8]
Other work by Roberts includes several excavations on the West Sussex downs, notably at Goosehill Camp on Bow Hill, an Iron Age enclosure previously excavated by the Sussex antiquary J.R. Boyden,[9][10][11] and Downley, the location of Iron Age and Roman settlements and a Tudor hunting lodge.[12] Both these latter projects were UCL Institute of Archaeology training excavations.[12]
