Professor Anthony James Legge ( 6 June 1939 – 4 February 2013). was a British

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

and academic, who specialised in

zooarchaeology Zooarchaeology (sometimes called archaeozoology), also known as faunal analysis, is a branch of archaeology that studies remains of animals from archaeological sites. Faunal remains are the items left behind when an animal dies. These include bon ...

. After attending the Cambridge High School for Boys, he began work at the Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham, Cambridge, in the Pig Physiology unit with Dr Lawrence Mount. After National Service, Legge returned to the Babraham Institute, leaving there in 1966 to enter

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establish ...

, as a mature student. He graduated in 1969, being awarded the college Special Book Prize for merit. Legge then joined Eric Higgs' research group at Cambridge investigating the early origins of agriculture, where he specialised in archaeofaunal analysis. He worked on the animal remains from Nahal Oren, and from

Tell Abu Hureyra Tell Abu Hureyra ( ar, تل أبو هريرة) is a prehistoric archaeological site in the Upper Euphrates valley in Syria. The tell was inhabited between 13,000 and 9,000 years ago in two main phases: Abu Hureyra 1, dated to the Epipalaeolithi ...

in Syria, which was to become a lifelong project. After working with Higgs until 1974, Legge was appointed to the University of London Department of Continuing Education, soon to become part of

Birkbeck College Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...

. Legge was appointed as Professor of Environmental Archaeology there in 2002. Work on Tell Abu Hureyra has shown that this is one of the few sites where the process of plant and animal domestication can be followed in detail, and is the only such site dug with modern methods with abundant samples of the organic remains needed in such investigations (see also

Gordon Hillman Gordon Hillman (20 July 1943 – 1 July 2018) was a British archaeobotanist and academic at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. He has been described as "a pivotal figure in the development of archaeobotany at the Institute of Archaeology at Univer ...

). The first volume of this work has been published. Legge was also involved in archaeological faunal analyses in Britain, Cyprus, Spain, Serbia, and Croatia, in each region seeking to follow the nature of animal domestication there. At

Grimes Graves Grime's Graves is a large Neolithic flint mining complex in Norfolk, England. It lies north east from Brandon, Suffolk in the East of England. It was worked between 2600 and 2300 BC, although production may have continued well int ...

in England, he studied the animal bones from two Bronze Age middens, where the inhabitants kept cattle, some sheep and a few pigs, and from these remains, he identified an intensive form of dairy husbandry. This finding was based on herd structure and on the frequency of cull of the young cattle. This interpretation stimulated some controversy in 1981, though more recent work on milk residues in Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery shows that this form of husbandry was indeed widespread in European prehistory. Work in Spain at a Bronze Age farming site also showed evidence for dairy husbandry there, but also with evidence for extensive hunting and trade in furs, skins, and other organic materials. Legge worked with Peter Rowley-Conwy on a re-analysis of the animal remains from the Mesolithic site of

Star Carr Star Carr is a Mesolithic archaeological site in North Yorkshire, England. It is around five miles () south of Scarborough. It is generally regarded as the most important and informative Mesolithic site in Great Britain. It is as important to ...

in England, their work showing that human settlement at that site was in summer rather than in winter as was first proposed, and re-interpreting the hunting activities there. Legge was a Senior Fellow in the MacDonald Institute for Archeological Research at Cambridge, where he continued to work on material from Tell Abu Hureyra, and Tell el Amarna in Egypt (with Professor Barry Kemp ) until his death in February 2013.

References

* 1987: ''Moncin: Poblado Prehistorico de la Edad del Bronce (I)''. Noticario Arqueologico Hispanico 29, Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid. (With Richard Harrison and Gloria Moreño-Lopez). * 1988: ''Star Carr Revisited; a Re-analysis of the Large Mammals''. Birkbeck College, London, (with

Peter Rowley-Conwy Peter Rowley-Conwy, (born 1951) is a British archaeologist and academic. He was Professor of Archaeology at Durham University from 2007 to 2020, having joined the university as a lecturer in 1990: he is now professor emeritus. He had previously ta ...

) * 1992: ''Excavations at Grimes Graves, Norfolk: Animals, Environment and Economy''. London, British Museum Press. * 2000: ''Village on the Euphrates; from Foraging to Farming at Abu Hureyra''. Oxford, New York (with A.M.T.Moore and G. H. Hillman.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Legge, Anthony 1939 births 2013 deaths Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge English archaeologists Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music People from Cambridge