Francis Pryor

Francis Pryor (right) filming an episode of Time Team in 2007 .

Francis Manning Marlborough Pryor (born January 13, 1945 in London ) is an English archaeologist whose research focus is on the Bronze and Iron Ages . He gained notoriety through his discovery and research of Flag Fen and his appearances on the popular science television series Time Team .

Career

Francis Pryor studied archeology and anthropology at Trinity College , Cambridge , where he graduated in 1967. After working at his parents' Truman's Brewery on East London's Brick Lane for 18 months , he moved to Toronto in 1969 , where he got a job at the Royal Ontario Museum . On behalf of this museum, he led excavations in Fengate , an industrial suburb of Peterborough , England , from 1971 to 1978 . He found Neolithic and Iron Age settlement traces as well as evidence of Bronze Age agriculture. This major project was followed by excavations in the villages of Maxey and Etton in the Welland Valley north of Peterborough. In 1982, very close to his first excavation in Fengate, he discovered the well-preserved remains of the Bronze Age settlement of Flag Fen. In 1987 he founded the Fenland Archaeological Trust with his wife, Maisie Taylor , with the goal of making Flag Fen available to the public.

Always concerned about good public relations , Francis Pryor was always ready for radio and television interviews and in 1988 presented a documentary for the BBC for the first time . In the 1990s he increasingly worked as a documentary presenter and appeared regularly on the successful Time Team series . Some documentaries were produced based on his books.

In 1999 Francis Pryor was named Member of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen for his services to tourism .

In addition to specialist articles and popular science books, Francis Pryor published two novels in 2014 and 2017.

Works (selection)

• Excavation at Fengate, Peterborough, England: the first report. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1974, ISBN 0-88854-035-3 ( Online on Internet Archive ).
• Excavation at Fengate, Peterborough, England: the second report. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1978, ISBN 0-88854-213-5 ( Online on Internet Archive ).
• Excavation at Fengate, Peterborough, England: the third report. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1980, ISBN 0-9507151-07 ( Online on Internet Archive ).
• English Heritage Book of Flag Fen: Prehistoric Fenland Center. BT Batsford Ltd, London 1991, ISBN 978-0-7134-6752-9 .
• Seahenge: A Quest for Life and Death in Bronze Age Britain. HarperCollins, London 2001, ISBN 978-0-00-710192-4 .
• Britain BC: life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans. HarperCollins, London 2003, ISBN 978-0-00-712693-4 .
• Britain AD: a quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons. HarperCollins, London 2004, ISBN 978-0-00-718187-2 .
• Flag Fen. Life and death of a Prehistoric Landscape. Tempus Publishing Ltd, Stroud, UK, 2005, ISBN 978-0-7524-2900-7 .
• Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History. HarperPress, London 2006, ISBN 978-0-00-720362-8 .
• The Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today. Allen Lane, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-84614-205-5 .
• The Birth of Modern Britain: A Journey into Britain's Archaeological Past: 1550 to the Present. HarperPress, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-00-729912-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Francis Pryor in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Francis Pryor in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Francis Pryor: My Life (so far). In: pryorfrancis.wordpress.com. Retrieved September 1, 2017 (English). 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Francis Pryor awarded honorary degree. University of York , January 24, 2017, accessed September 2, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Timothy Clack, Marcus Brittain: Archeology and the Media . Routledge, Abingdon / New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-59874-234-3 , pp. 125 ff . ( Chapter online at Academia.edu ).