R. J. C. Atkinson

Richard John Copland Atkinson CBE (22 January 1920 – 10 October 1994) was a British prehistorian and archaeologist.

He was born in Evershot, Dorset, and went to Sherborne School and then Magdalen College, Oxford, reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics. During the Second World War his Quaker beliefs meant that he was a conscientious objector; in 1944 he became Assistant Keeper of Archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum. He also produced a theory on the creation of Stonehenge.

He investigated sites including Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow and Wayland's Smithy, and was a friend and collaborator of Stuart Piggott and John F.S. Stone. His Silbury work was part of an aborted BBC documentary series on the monument. In 1949 he was appointed a lecturer at Edinburgh University, and in 1958 moved to University College, Cardiff, to become its first professor of archaeology. He remained at Cardiff until he retired in 1983. He served on the University Grants Committee. He received the CBE in 1979. Atkinson worked tirelessly to promote and develop science-based British archaeology, and was famous for his practical contributions to archaeological technique and his pragmatic solutions to on-site problems, which were listed in the handbook he wrote called Field Archaeology.

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