Stuart Piggott

Stuart Piggott ( born May 28, 1910 Petersfield ( Hampshire), † September 23, 1996 in Wantage ) was a British prehistorians.

His ancestors were teacher and farmer in the vicinity of Uffington ( which includes the prehistoric Uffington White Horse is located). Piggott attended Churcher 's College in Petersfield ( Hampshire), where his father was a teacher, and worked after graduation in 1927 at the Museum of Reading, in which he dealt with Neolithic pottery.

From 1928 he worked for several years for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and dug at Butser Hill near Petersfield and was involved in the excavations of Eliot and Cecil Curwen ( his father's friends ) of mine works at The Trundle in Sussex. There he met the archaeologist Grahame Clarke and Charles Phillips of Cambridge. In the 1930s, he dug a lot in Wessex with Alexander Keiller, who had taken the jam factory his family, but also as an archaeologist in particular in Avebury made ​​a name. Piggott was involved in the founding of the Prehistoric Society and earned his first degree in 1936 as an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London at Mortimer Wheeler. There he met his future wife, and was with her in the excavation of Sutton Hoo in 1939 involved ( at the invitation of Charles Phillips). During World War II he worked as Luftbildauswerter in India, but also studied Indian archeology, which led to two books. After the war he was at Oxford, and in 1946 professor of archeology at the University of Edinburgh as successor to Vere Gordon Childe. In 1977 he became Professor Emeritus.

In 1938 he introduced the concept of the Bronze Age Wessex culture. He wrote some overviews of British history that belonged to his time to the standard works.

He often dug out with his assistant Richard JC Atkinson, including Cairnpapple Hill in West Lothian, Wayland's Smithie in Oxfordshire and West Kennet Long Barrow (1955 /56) and Stonehenge ( 1950, with Atkinson as the main excavator 1956) in Wiltshire.

In 1953 he became a member of the British Academy. 1960 to 1963 he was president of the Prehistoric Society, 1967-1972 President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and from 1967 to 1970 of the Council for British Archaeology. 1968 to 1974 he was a Trustee of the British Museum. He was a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972. In 1983 he received the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and in 1992 the Grahame Clarke Medal for Services to the prehistoric archeology of the British Academy.

Writings

• Ancient Europe from the beginnings of agriculture to classical antiquity. A survey, Edinburgh University Press 1965 German translation: Prehistory of Europe. From nomadism to high culture, Kindler's cultural history, 1974

• German translation: The world from which we come. The history of mankind, Droemer / Knaur, Munich 1961