Mark Roberts (archaeologist)

Mark Roberts
Roberts using a total station at Boxgrove, 2011.
Born	Mark Brian Roberts (1961-05-20) 20 May 1961 (age 56) Chichester, West Sussex, England
Occupation	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 and subsequent excavations at the Lower Palaeolithic site of Boxgrove Quarry in southern England. He is also a teacher and Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. In 1994, he was awarded the Stopes Medal for his contribution to the study of Palaeolithic humans and geology.

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 going off to study at the then-independent Institute of Archaeology in Bloomsbury, London in 1980. Soon after, he initiated excavations at Boxgrove, West Sussex, uncovering the best preserved Middle Palaeolithic site then known to archaeologists. Eventually, in 1993 the project unearthed remains belonging to a Homo heidelbergensis, which proved to be the earliest known hominin in Europe at that time. Boxgrove excavations continued until 1996, following which Roberts published the findings from the site, including the book Fairweather Eden (1998), co-written with Mike Pitts.

Since then, Roberts has focused his excavations at other sites, such as the Bronze and Iron Age landscape of Bow Hill, West Sussex, where he was involved in excavating Goosehill Camp, and also the Late Mediaeval house at Blackden, Cheshire, which is the home to the novelist Alan Garner, and where he co-directed excavations with fellow archaeologist Richard Morris.

Roberts was born in Chichester, West Sussex in 1961, and lived with his parents and three younger siblings (two brothers and a sister) in the town of East Preston. Initially attending the local County Primary School, his family later relocated to Worthing, from where he began attending Elm Grove School. Passing his 11-plus exam, he began studying at Worthing High School. He disliked school, although did both O levels and then A levels, whilst meanwhile maintaining an interest in fossils, which he collected from the local chalk pits. In 1978, Roberts volunteered to work on an archaeological excavation – run by the Sussex Archaeological Field Unit – of a Bronze Age site known as Black Patch in the West Sussex chalk downs overlooking Newhaven, a site that he would later tell an interviewer has remained one of his favourites for the rest of his life.