Stuart Ernest Piggott ( born Stuart Ernest Piggott , May 28, 1910 , Petersfield , Hampshire - September 23, 1996 ) is a British archaeologist who became famous as a researcher of prehistoric Wessex.
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After graduating from Cherchurs College from 1927, he worked as an assistant in the Museum of the city of Reading , where he studied ceramics of the Neolithic era. In 1928, he was admitted to the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and over the next 5 years he conducted a revolutionary study of an archaeological site in Butser Hill near Petersfield . He also participated in the excavation of the prehistoric moat in Tradle ( Sussex ).
In the 1930s. Piggott began working with Alexander Killer , an amateur archaeologist who financed his work from the proceeds from his production of Dundee marmalade. Together they unearthed numerous monuments in Wessex, including Avebury and Kennet Avenue . In 1933, Piggott joined his friend Graham Clark in writing an important study called The Age of the British Flint Mines, published in 1933 in the magazine Antiquity . The controversy surrounding the article led to the founding of the Prehistoric Society . Still not having a formal qualification in archeology by that time, Piggott entered the Mortimer Wheeler Institute of Archeology, where in 1936 he received a diploma and where he met his wife Peggy (Margaret Guido). In 1937, Piggott published another important work, The Early Bronze Age in Wessex ( The Early Bronze Age in Wessex ), and together with his wife in June 1939, he joined the excavations of the burial chamber in Sutton Hoo at the invitation of archaeologist Charles Phillips .
During the Second World War, Piggott worked as an interpreter of aerial photographs, and was sent to India, where he studied local archeology. According to local materials, Piggott wrote the books Some Ancient Cities of India ( Some Ancient Cities of India , 1946) and Prehistoric India ( Prehistoric India , 1950). The material of these studies proved to be useful for him in studying the monuments of prehistoric Europe after his return to the UK.
After the war, Piggott worked for a short time at Oxford , Ged studied the legacy of W. Stucli , but already in 1946 he received a department at Edinburgh University , funded by a grant from Lord J. Abercrombie , succeeding G. Child . Piggott managed to transform the Department of Archeology at the University of Edinburgh into one of the recognized scientific centers in world archeology. He continued to publish the work of Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles (1954), which had a great influence on the world archeology of the prehistoric era, to the point where the extensive use of the radiocarbon method disproved many of the propositions of prehistoric chronology he proposed. Piggott made a categorical opponent of the radiocarbon method, arguing that all other facts, with the exception of radiocarbon dating, testified in favor of his conclusions. He adhered to these same views in his new work, Ancient Europe (1965), which for 20 years was considered an important survey work on the prehistoric period. In 1956, Piggott divorced his wife. Their marriage was childless.
In 1958, Piggott published a survey study on the prehistoric period of Scotland Scotland before History , and in 1959 - the review paper “Approach to Archeology” ( Approach to Archaeology ).
In 1963, in a collection in honor of the archaeologist Cyril Fox, Piggott published a detailed analysis of the British version of the culture of bell-shaped cups . He also published the following works: The Druids (1968), Prehistoric Societies (in collaboration with Graham Clark ), The Earliest Wheeled Transport (1983), Wagon, Chariot and Carriage (1992), Ancient Britain and the Antiquarian Imagination (1989).
Piggott was president of the Prehistoric Society in 1960-1963, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1963-1967, the Council of British Archeology in 1967-1970, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum in 1968-1974.
Piggott was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1972, as well as numerous scientific awards from British and foreign research institutions. He died of a heart attack.
The most important monuments that he unearthed (often in collaboration with Richard Atkinson ):
- Cairnpapple Hill in West Lothian
- Waylands Smythe in Oxfordshire
- West Kennet Long Barrow and Stonehenge in Wiltshire
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 BNF ID : 2011 open data platform .
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 118792148 // General regulatory control (GND) - 2012—2016.
Literature
- Bradley, R. Obituary: Stuart Piggott . // British Archaeology , No. 19, November 1996.
- Daniel, Glyn Edmund; Chippindale, Christopher . The Pastmasters: Eleven Modern Pioneers of Archeology: V. Gordon Childe, Stuart Piggott, Charles Phillips, Christopher Hawkes, Seton Lloyd, Robert J. Braidwood, Gordon R. Willey, CJ Becker, Sigfried J. De Laet, J. Desmond Clark, DJ Mulvaney. - N. Y .: Thames and Hudson, 1989 (hardcover, ISBN 0500050511 ).
- Mercer, R. Piggott, Stuart Ernest (1910–1996). // Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . - Oxford University Press, 2004.