Francis Pryor
Francis Manning Marlborough Pryor MBE FSA (born 13 January 1945) is a British archaeologist who is famous for his role in the discovery of Flag Fen, a Bronze Age archaeological site near Peterborough, and for his frequent appearances on the Channel 4 television series Time Team.[1][2]
He has now retired from full-time field archaeology, but still appears on television and writes books as well as being a working farmer. His specialities are in the Bronze and Iron Ages.
[edit] Biography
Pryor is the son of Barbara Helen Robertson & Robert Matthew Marlborough Pryor MBE TD (known as Matthew) & the grandson of Walter Marlborough Pryor DSO** DL JP, soldiers who served in both World Wars respectively[3]. He was educated at Eton College with his first cousin William Pryor[4] and studied archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a PhD in 1985.
He married Sylvia in 1969, and migrated with her to Toronto, Canada, on a landed immigrant scheme. There he started working at the Royal Ontario Museum as technician, working for Doug Tushingham who helped fund Pryor's first project in the United Kingdom. This was at North Elmham and the excavation was directed by Peter Wade-Martins who exposed Pryor to the benefit of opening large area excavations.
Pryor returned to the UK in 1970, where the construction of the new town at Peterborough offered the opportunity to do large scale archaeology ahead of the planned development work. Between 1970 and 1978, he alternated between digs in the UK and writing up the excavation reports and giving presentations on his work in Canada. Pryor and his first wife were divorced in 1977, and during the course of these projects, he met his second wife, Maisie Taylor, an expert in prehistoric wood; they worked together on the series of projects in the Peterborough area, the most famous of which is Flag Fen. He has a daughter, Amy, from his first marriage. He was a founding member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists in 1982.
Pryor was awarded an MBE "For services to tourism" in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours[5].
[edit] Works
- Francis Pryor. Seahenge: A Quest for Life and Death in Bronze Age Britain. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-710192-9. An archaeology autobiography
- Francis Pryor. Flag Fen. Life and death of a Prehistoric Landscape. Tempus Publishing Ltd, Stroud, UK, 2005, ISBN 0-7524-2900-0.
- Francis Pryor. Britain BC: life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-712693-X.
- Francis Pryor. Britain AD: a quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-718187-6.
- Francis Pryor. Farmers in Prehistoric Britain. Tempus. ISBN 0-7524-1477-1.
- Francis Pryor. Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-720362-4.
- Francis Pryor. The Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-1-84-614205-5.
- Francis Pryor. The Birth of Modern Britain: A Journey into Britain's Archaeological Past: 1550 to the Present. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-729912-6.
Britain AD - Three part Channel 4 series. 2004.
[edit] References
- ^ PRYOR, Dr Francis Manning Marlborough’, Who's Who 2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2011 ; online edn, Nov 2011 accessed 13 Jan 2012
- ^ Francis Pryor at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Burke's Peerage and Gentry: Pryor of Weston http://www.burkespeerage.com/FamilyHomepage.aspx?FID=11324
- ^ William Pryor (2003). Survival of the Coolest:A Great-grandson of Charles Darwin's Death Defying Journey into the Interior of Heroin Addiction in the 60s and Back out Again. ISBN 9781904555131.
- ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/queens-birthday-honours-the-full-list-1099582.html
