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Leslie Alcock (24 April 1925 — 6 June 2006) was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, and one of the leading archaeologists of Early Mediaeval Britain. His major excavations included Dinas Powys hill fort in Wales, Cadbury Castle in Somerset and a series of major hillforts in Scotland.
Alcock was born in Manchester. His intellectual prowess was demonstrated early, when he won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School in 1935. In 1942, he left school and joined the army to fight in the Second World War as a captain in the Gurkhas. This experience was valuable to him in a number of respects. He became fluent in Urdu and Punjabi, and also developed an interest in archaeology and in the Indian sub-continent as a whole. After demobilisation in 1946, he won a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read Modern History from 1946 to 1949. He pursued his interest in archaeology through the Oxford Archaeology Society, becoming its president. He met his wife Elizabeth during this period, and they were married in 1950, shortly before he left Britain to become the first director of the Archaeological Survey of Pakistan. He had previously returned to the sub-continent to serve as Sir Mortimer Wheeler's deputy on the excavations at Mohenjodaro. This relationship was to prove more valuable than the directorship of the survey, which he left after not being paid for several months. Back in Britain, a short stint as curator at the Abbey House Museum in Leeds in 1952 was followed by a post as a junior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at Cardiff University. He was to remain in Cardiff for 20 years, rising to the level of Reader, and undertaking his major southern British excavations at Dînas Powys in Wales (Alcock 1963) and South Cadbury (Alcock 1972). During this period, Cardiff was to emerge as one of the powerhouses of archaeology in British universities, and many of the leading figures in British archaeology today encountered Alcock as a teacher at that time.
The excavation at Cadbury Castle, South Cadbury, made Alcock's name. The hillfort had a traditional link with Camelot and the Arthurian legends, and Alcock made sure that the media were aware of his work. The five seasons of the excavations were widely reported, making Alcock into one of the better known British archaeologists of the time. His methodology made headlines within the archaeological community with his use of geophysical survey, which in those pre-Time Team days was an unusual and experimental process, while he also preferred the use of open-area excavation to the Wheeler method that held sway at the time. This methodology was to become the standard technique for British archaeology from the start of large scale rescue work in the 1970s, and shows that Alcock was at the cutting edge of archaeology.
Alcock's sense of humour also came out during the excavations. He had a good understanding of what visitors to the site wanted to see, so he had a plastic skeleton excavated from the same spot every afternoon, with a bucket beside the trench to take donations for the diggers' welfare fund. The money was used to the benefit of the local economy each evening in the pub.
The results of the excavation were impressive. The earliest identifiable occupation on the hill was Early and Late Neolithic. After an apparent hiatus during the earlier Bronze Age it was reoccupied in the centuries around 1000BC, remaining so continuously until at least the first century AD. His excavations produced scant evidence for Roman occupation, aside from a barracks block of the latter first century but demonstrated that it was the largest reoccupied fortified hilltop in post-Roman Britain. He also identified Late Saxon refurbishment of the defences and a foundation trench for a probable cruciform church, apparently never completed but intended to meet the needs of moneyers moved to the hill for security during the early 11th century AD.
Alcock was able to tell evocative stories of the history of the fort, and particularly of its fate during the Roman period, where there was clear evidence of a violent attack on the fort. However, the scale of the material recovered meant that his publication of the site (Alcock 1972) was really a large scale interim report. Final publication waited until 1995 for the Early Medieval material, which he published himself in 1995 (Alcock 1995), and 2000 for the earlier material (Barrett et al. 2000). The main drawback for Alcock was that he had now become irrevocably connected with Arthur in the minds of the public.
From 1994 until his death in 2006 Alcock was patron of the South Cadbury Environs Project, a programme of research exploring the landscape around the hillfort.
The publicity from the South Cadbury excavations meant that Alcock was one of Britain's best known archaeologists in the early 1970s. This was reflected in 1973, when he was appointed to the newly established Chair of Archaeology at [1] (Alcock et al. 1986; Alcock & Alcock 1987; Alcock et al. 1989; Alcock & Alcock 1990; Alcock & Alcock 1992). The results of the excavations indicated that he had been correct in the majority of his identifications, and he had achieved his intention of providing a base of information for others to work from. It is also important to note the involvement of his wife Elizabeth in the publishing of these papers. She was an integral part of the research programme and was an archaeologist in her own right.
Leslie Alcock retired from the University of Glasgow in 1990. He was still working on the publications of his reconnaissance excavations and on the publication of the South Cadbury excavation. His involvement in the latter decreased after his publication of the early Medieval material in 1995, and the earlier periods were left to a team of researchers from the Department of Archaeology at Glasgow University, led by John C. Barrett. He was now working more on synthetic works about the early Medieval period and trying not to have any more to do with Arthur, who had become something of a millstone to him. His work culminated in the publication of a book based upon his 1989 Rhind lectures, Kings & Warriors, Craftsmen & Priests (Alcock 2003). By this time, he had been awarded an OBE (in 1991), but his health was now failing and he retired fully from Archaeology. He died on 6 June 2006, at Stevenage.
The archives of Leslie Alcock are maintained by the Archives of the University of Glasgow (GUAS).
Somerset, England, Neolithic Europe, Yeovil, Bronze Age Britain
Devon, Wiltshire, Taunton Deane, West Somerset, Sedgemoor
Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Canada, Australia, Liverpool
University of Oxford, United Kingdom, University of Cambridge, Manchester, England
Persian language, Pakistan, Bihar, Hindi, Arabic language
Merlin, Cornwall, King Arthur, Caerleon, Winchester
Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur, Welsh language, Saint Patrick, Merlin
Merlin, Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur, Rome, Gawain
Mississippian culture, Republic of Macedonia, Illinois, Oklahoma, Iron Age
Fín, Latin, Bede, Osred I of Northumbria, Angles