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 , latin_name = , 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 Burgess
page at the Archaeology Data Service, as well as th
Hommage

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Burgess, Colin B 1938 births 2014 deaths 20th-century archaeologists 21st-century archaeologists Academics of Newcastle University

Biography

Contributions

See also

References

External links