Barry Cunliffe

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe CBE (born December 10, 1939), known as Barry Cunliffe, has been Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford since 1972.

After studying at Northern Grammar School (now Mayfield School (Portsmouth), and reading archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, he became a lecturer at the University of Bristol in 1963. Fascinated by the Roman remains in nearby Bath he threw himself into a programme of excavation and publication. His energy and intelligence drew attention and in 1966 he became an unusually young professor when he took the chair at the newly-founded department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. There he became involved in the excavation (1961-8) of the Roman palace at Fishbourne in Sussex.

Another site in southern England led him away from the Roman period. He began a long series of summer excavations (1969-1988) of the Iron Age hill fort at Danebury in Hampshire. Other sites he has worked on include Hengistbury Head in Dorset, Mount Batten in Devon, Le Câtel in Jersey and Le Yaudet in Brittany. This reflects his interest in the communities of Atlantic Europe during the Iron Age.

He continued to work at Danebury after moving to Oxford in 1972 and is currently involved in the Danebury Environs Project. His interest in Iron Age Britain and Europe generated a number of publications and he became an acknowledged authority on the Celts.

He was President of the Council for British Archaeology 1976-79. He has been a member of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Committee of English Heritage since 1984 and of the Advisory Committee of the Discovery Programme (Ireland) since 1991. He is a Governor of the Museum of London, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and chair of the Advisory Committee for the e-journal Internet Archaeology.

Cunliffe was knighted on 17 June 2006. He lives with his wife and two cats in Oxford.

Selected publications

• Fishbourne (1971)
• Iron Age Communities in Britain (1974) ISBN 0-7100-8725-X
• Iron Age Settlements and Pottery 650 BC - 60 AD, in The Archaeology of Somerset (1982) ISBN 0-86183-028-8
• The Celtic World (1987)
• Wessex to AD 1000 (1993)
• The Ancient Celts (1997) ISBN 0-14-025422-6
• Facing the Ocean (2001), based on his radio series
• The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek (2002)

External links

• Barry Cunliffe Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.