Colin B Burgess (1938 - 2014) was an archaeologist specializing in the
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
, especially in the north east of England and the Mediterranean.
Biography
Originally from
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, Burgess studied at
Cardiff University
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, image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University
, motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord
, mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord
, established = 1 ...
, where he wrote an undergraduate dissertation on bronze-age metalwork from the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
.
For most of his career, he worked at
Newcastle University
Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is ...
, where he focused on the archaeology of north east of England, and formed relationships with both amateur archaeologists and international scholars.
Sometime in or after the 1980s, Burgess moved to France, having grown "disillusioned" with trends in British archaeology.
(This disillusionment is expressed most forcefully in a note published in the 2001 reissue of his textbook, ''The Age of Stonehenge''.) In this period he was particularly interested in the archaeology of
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...
.
He returned to England for medical treatment towards the end of his life.
Contributions
In the 1960s, Burgess developed a scheme for Bronze Age chronology that is still in use today.
He established the
Bronze Age Studies Group
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...
, and international group of scholars that first met in 1976, and continued to meet as late as 2016.
Building on his undergraduate dissertation, his 1988 work, written with I. A. Colquhoun, ''The swords of Britain,'' catalogs over 800 examples of Bronze Age swords. Burgess and Colquhoun use methods from
experimental archaeology to suggest that it took three weeks to manufacture a sword, with Bronze Age technology.
[See th]
abstract
of ''The swords of Britain'' at the Archaeology Data Service.
Burgess published on archaeological topics for a full five decades; his last publication appeared in 2012. For a list of publications, see th
Colin B Burgesspage at the
Archaeology Data Service, as well as th
Hommage
See also
*
Carp's Tongue complex
In archaeology, the Carp's Tongue complex refers to a tradition of metal working from south eastern England to the later Bronze Age. It is part of the Ewart Park Phase that dates from the ninth century BC.
Numerous distinctive metal items have be ...
References
External links
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Burgess, Colin B
1938 births
2014 deaths
20th-century archaeologists
21st-century archaeologists
Academics of Newcastle University