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David Peacock (archaeologist)

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David Peacock
A white man in old age, seated at a conference table, smiling broadly at the camera. He wears a thick, navy-blue woollen jumper.
Born(1939-01-14)14 January 1939
Died15 March 2015(2015-03-15) (aged 76)
Occupations
AwardsKenyon Medal (2011)
Academic background
Education
Academic work
Institutions
Notable students

David Philip Spencer Peacock (14 January 1939 – 15 March 2015) was a British archaeologist. Educated at Stamford School and at the University of St Andrews, he spent most of his career at the University of Southampton, where he specialised in the scientific study of Roman pottery.

Peacock worked on the site of Carthage, alongside Michael Fulford, in the 1970s, where he developed techniques of studying pottery which became widely adopted in other Mediterranean excavations. Towards the end of the decade, he carried out ethnographic survey work on North African potteries, which formed the basis of an influential typology of ceramic production sites. From the late 1980s, he worked on Roman Egypt, directing a survey of the quarry at Mons Claudianus and co-directing the survey and excavation of Mons Porphyrites. He also proved the location of the Roman Red Sea port of Myos Hormos and mapped the ports of Adulis and Gabeza.

Peacock has been credited with establishing the discipline of ceramic petrography in Britain.[1] He was awarded the Kenyon Medal for classical studies by the British Academy in 2011. An obituary in Times Higher Education called him "one of the most innovative archaeologists of his generation".[2]

Biography[edit]

David Philip Spencer Peacock was born on 14 January 1939.[3] He was educated at Stamford School, an all-boys independent school in Lincolnshire.[2] While there, he took part in archaeological fieldwork at the encouragement of the medievalist John Hurst.[4] He attended excavations at Snail Down, near Everleigh, during his time at the school,[5] and also took part in the excavation of a medieval kiln that had produced Stamford ware pottery, which was discovered in 1963 after ceramic sherds were found on the school's playing fields.[6]

Peacock subsequently studied at the University of St Andrews in Scotland,[7] from which he received a BSc and,[2] in 1965, a PhD in geology.[4] He then moved to the University of Birmingham, where he held, from 1965 until 1968, a research fellowship titled "The Application of Science to Archaeology".[7] Thereafter, he moved to the University of Southampton, where he spent the remainder of his career: he was promoted to professor in 1990.[4] He served two terms, 1998–2001 and 2001–2003, as Head of Archaeology at Southampton.[7]

In the 1970s, Peacock worked on the British-led UNESCO excavations at the North African site of Carthage, which began in 1974 under the direction of Henry Hurst.[8] Alongside Michael Fulford, he worked on the site's Roman-period pottery.[9] In the late 1970s, he established the Ceramics Research Unit at Southampton, funded by English Heritage. With David F. Williams, he worked on promoting the reporting of finds of Roman amphorae from excavations in Britain, and on identifying the types of stone, including marble, used on Roman sites. In the late 1980s, he carried out the first large-scale survey of Roman pottery-production sites in the central and Sahel regions of Tunisia.[7]

From the later 1980s, Peacock worked extensively on Roman Egypt. Between 1987 and 1993, he directed the survey of Mons Claudianus, a Roman quarry in the Eastern Desert, as part of a project led by Jean Bingen. From 1994 until 1998, he co-directed the survey and excavation of Mons Porphyrites, in the Red Sea Hills, with Valerie Maxfield.[7] He later demonstrated that the Roman Red Sea port of Myos Hormos was located at Quseir al Qadim, and excavated there alongside Lucy Blue between 1999 and 2003.[10] Between 2004 and 2005, Peacock and Blue mapped the Red Sea ports of Adulis and Gabeza in Eritrea.[11]

Peacock established the Highfield Press, which he handed over to his son Andrew to manage.[10] He was married to Barbara.[2] David Peacock retired in 2004,[4] and died on 15 March 2015. An obituary in Times Higher Education called him "one of the most innovative archaeologists of his generation".[2]

Academic work[edit]

Peacock's work advanced the study of Roman trade: in particular, he worked on the economic role of transport amphorae, the connections between Rome and India, and the economy of the city of Carthage. According to a 2015 obituary in The Times, his writings on the circulation of Roman pottery remained standard works on the subject.[12] Peacock's 1982 work Pottery in the Roman World: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach applied his study of contemporary traditional potteries to those in earlier periods,[7] and set forth a typology of ceramic production sites described as "classic" by the medieval archaeologist Chris Wickham in 2013.[13] Reviewing the book, Richard Reece called it "just the shot in the arm that pottery studies needed".[14] Paul Nicholson and Helen Patterson, however, criticised what they saw as Peacock's failure to set forth how his proposed types of sites would be manifested and distinguishable in the archaeological record.[15]

Between 1967 and 1970, Peacock focused his work on ceramic petrography (the mineralogical study of ancient pottery).[4] He made use of techniques normally used in geology, such as the microscopic analysis of thin sections of pottery to identify their clay's place of origin.[7] Roberta Tomber, who was one of two students to complete Peacock's MSc course titled the "Scientific Analysis of Artefacts",[10] credited two of his articles from this period with "radically chang[ing] British prehistory, [by] illustrating the movement of pottery beyond local regions".[16] In one of these papers, published in 1969, Peacock identified inclusions of gabbro in Neolithic coarseware pottery from around the south-west of England, which allowed him to trace its origin to a single source on the The Lizard in Cornwall, and so to demonstrate that the pottery had been transported over longer distances than previously thought. The archaeologist Patrick Quinn has credited Peacock with establishing the discipline of ceramic petrography in the United Kingdom.[17]

The techniques that Peacock and Fulford applied to the analysis of pottery finds at Carthage became standard practice in Mediterranean excavations. These methods included a system for using the fabric of potsherds to sort large ceramic assemblages, and the use of quantitative measurements such as the weighing of ceramic finds.[10] They identified and named the Roman pottery style known as Pantellerian Ware, after its origin on the island of Pantelleria: the use of thin-section analysis demonstrated that the pottery contained inclusions similar to those of the island's volcanic rock.[18] The archaeologist Simon Keay described the two articles stemming from Peacock's survey work in Tunisia as "landmark".[19]

Peacock also studied the trade in decorative stone throughout the Roman empire, particularly that quarried in Egypt.[12] Keay described Peacock's 2013 monograph, The Stone of Life, as his magnum opus on the topic.[20]

In 2011, Peacock was awarded the Kenyon Medal for classical studies by the British Academy and the Pommerance Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America.[21] A Festschrift in his honour was published posthumously in 2016.[22] His doctoral students included the archaeologist Richard Hodges.[23]

Published works[edit]

As co-author[edit]

  • Peacock, David; Williams, David F. (1986). Amphorae and the Roman Economy: An Introductory Guide. Longman Archaeology Series. London and New York: Longman. ISBN 0582493048.
  • Peacock, David; Béjaoui, Fathi; Ben Lazreg, Nejib (1989). "Roman Amphora Production in the Sahel Region of Tunisia". Amphores romaine et histoire économique: dix ans de recherche: actes du colloque de Sienne (22–24 mai 1986) [Roman Amphorae and Economic History: Ten Years of Research: Proceedings of the Colloquium at Sienne (22–24 May 1986)]. Publications de l'École française de Rome. Vol. 114. Rome: French School at Rome. pp. 179–222. ISBN 2728301808. Retrieved 2024-07-16 – via Persée.
  • Peacock, David; Béjaoui, Fathi; Ben Lazreg, Nejib (1990). "Roman Pottery Production in Central Tunisia". Journal of Roman Archaeology. 3: 59–84. doi:10.1017/S1047759400010849. eISSN 2331-5709.
  • Peacock, David; Blue, Lucy, eds. (2007). The Ancient Red Sea Port of Adulis, Eritrea: Report of the Eritro-British Expedition, 2004–5. Oxford: Oxbow Books. ISBN 9781842173084.

As sole author or editor[edit]

  • Peacock, David (1969a). "A Contribution to the Study of Glastonbury Ware from South-Western Britain". The Antiquaries Journal. 49 (1): 41–61. doi:10.1017/S0003581500032558. eISSN 1758-5309.
  • — (1969b). "A Petrological Study of Certain Iron Age Pottery from Western England". Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 34: 414–427. doi:10.1017/S0079497X00013967. eISSN 2050-2729.
  • —, ed. (1977). Pottery and Early Commerce: Characterization and Trade in Roman and Later Ceramics. London, New York and San Francisco: Academic Press. ISBN 012547850X.
  • — (1982). Pottery in the Roman World: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach. Longman Archaeology Series. London and New York: Longman. ISBN 0582491274.
  • — (2013). The Stone of Life: Querns, Mills and Flour Production in Europe up to c. 500 AD. Southampton Monographs in Archaeology. St Andrews: Highfield Press. ISBN 9780992633608.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Quinn 2013, p. 12.
  2. ^ a b c d e Reisz 2015.
  3. ^ Keay 2015, p. 965. For Peacock's full name, see Tomber 2018, p. xiii.
  4. ^ a b c d e Tomber 2018, p. xiii.
  5. ^ Reisz 2015. For the Snail Down excavations, see Thomas & Thomas 1955.
  6. ^ Reisz 2015. For the date, see Historic England Research Records–Monument Number 348006.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Keay 2015, p. 965.
  8. ^ Reisz 2015; Keay 2015, p. 965. For the chronology of the excavations, see Hurst 1975, p. 11.
  9. ^ Hurst 1975, p. 13; Hurst 1976, p. 177.
  10. ^ a b c d Tomber 2018, p. xiv.
  11. ^ Keay 2015, p. 966; Peacock & Blue 2007, preface.
  12. ^ a b The Times, 17 June 2015.
  13. ^ Wickham 2013, p. 314.
  14. ^ Reece 1983, p. 298.
  15. ^ Nicholson & Patterson 1985, pp. 223–224.
  16. ^ Tomber 2018, p. xiii. The articles in question are Peacock 1969a and Peacock 1969b.
  17. ^ Quinn 2013, p. 12. The paper is Peacock 1969a.
  18. ^ Montana et al. 2007, pp. 455–456.
  19. ^ Keay 2015, p. 965. The articles are Peacock, Béjaoui & Ben Lazreg 1989 and Peacock, Béjaoui & Ben Lazreg 1990.
  20. ^ Keay 2015, p. 966.
  21. ^ "In Memory of David Peacock". University of Southampton. 17 March 2015. Retrieved 2024-07-15.
  22. ^ The Festschrift is Sibbesson, Jervis & Coxon 2016.
  23. ^ Hodges 2023.

Sources[edit]

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