British archaeologist
Miles Russell, FSA (born 8 April 1967) is a British archaeologist best known for his work and publications on the prehistoric and Roman periods and for his appearances in television programmes such as Time Team and Harry Hill's TV Burp.[1]
Personal life
Russell was born and educated in Brighton, and in 1993 moved to Bournemouth, where he has lectured at Bournemouth University and, since 2009, has worked on the Duropolis "Big Dig", part of the Durotriges Project, with co-directors Paul Cheetham and Harry Manley. He has written 15 books,[2] covering the Neolithic and Roman periods and has appeared numerous times on television, most notably in the Channel 4 television series Time Team alongside presenter Tony Robinson. He has also been a frequent contributor to Digging for Britain, presented by Dr Alice Roberts.[3]
Career
As a graduate of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, he subsequently worked as a field officer for UCL's Field Archaeology Unit and a Project Manager for the Oxford Archaeological Unit. In 1993 he joined the staff of Bournemouth University, where he is a senior lecturer, subsequently conducting fieldwork on various projects across southern England, Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Sicily, Germany and Russia.[4] He obtained his PhD from Bournemouth University, on the Neolithic monumental architecture of the South Downs in 2000 and became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2006. He is director of Regnum: the First Kingdom[5] and co-director of the Durotriges Project,[6] both investigating the transition from the Iron Age to Roman period as well as co-ordinating projects into Neolithic Flint Mines,[7] Piltdown Man,[8] The ‘Face’ of Roman Britain[9] and the Lost voices of Celtic Britain.[10]
Russell organised and chaired the session 'When Worlds Collide: Archaeology and Science Fiction' at the 1997 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference held at Bournemouth University. Author Douglas Adams, who had been invited to attend, wrote the preface to the book 'Digging Holes in Popular Culture' published by Oxbow Books in 2002 which derived from the conference.[11]
In 2003 Russell published the results of a three-year project investigating the Piltdown Man hoax which strongly implied that the perpetrator of the fraud was the 'finder' Charles Dawson. In 2008 he co-directed excavations within Stonehenge, together with Professor Tim Darvill and Professor Geoffrey Wainwright. In 2013 Russell and colleague Harry Manley identified a fragment of a Roman statue, previously known as the "Bosham Head", as representing the Emperor Trajan.[12] Russell and Manley have also identified a damaged statue of the young emperor Nero from Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex and have tentatively identified a Roman statue held at Petworth House as also being a representation of the Emperor Nero.[13]
In 2017 Russell published the first results from the Lost Voices of Celtic Britain Project, reassessing the archaeological content of the 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth.[14] A forensic examination of Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae has demonstrated the text was compiled from a variety of early British sources, including oral folklore, king-lists, dynastic tables and bardic praise poems, some of which date back to the first century BC.[15] In deconstructing Geoffrey’s text, Russell has argued that the origins of King Arthur emerge as a composite ‘Celtic Superhero’ created by Geoffrey from five separate characters.[16][17]
