Richard J. C. Atkinson

Richard John Copland Atkinson ( born January 22, 1920 in Evershot, Dorset, † 10 October 1994) was a British prehistorians. He dug among others in the 1950s from Stonehenge.

Atkinson studied at Magdalen College, Oxford University philosophy, politics and economics. During World War II he refused to do military service as a Quaker. In 1944 he was Assistant Keeper of Archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and in 1949 he was a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and an assistant to Stuart Piggott, with whom he was friends. In 1958 he became the first professor of archeology at University College, Cardiff, where he remained until his retirement in 1983.

He dug from 1950 to 1964 in Stonehenge. Due to overload with administrative work and later health problems, he was unable to fully publish the reports on the campaigns for this purpose. In Stonehenge, he worked with Piggott and John FS Stone.

He criticized the theory of Stonehenge as an astronomical computer stone age by Gerald Hawkins. His own theories about Stonehenge he lay in a popular book in the Penguin Publishing dar. He also wrote a practical manual of field archeology.

He dug into Silbury Hill ( filmed by the BBC ), West Kennet Long Barrow Wayland's and Smith.

In 1979 he was Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Writings

• Stonehenge, Penguin 1956, 1960
• Field Archeology, Methuen 1946, 1953, Hyperion Press 1976