Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe, CBE, was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007. His interest in archaeology, specifically the Roman period, was fired as a nine year old. His Roman work included excavations in Winchester and at Fishbourne. He switched to the Iron Age with the long programme at Danebury Hill Fort (1969-1988) about 12 miles to the west of Winchester. This was followed by the first phase of the Danebury Environs Project, from 1989 to 1996, which looked the entire landscape and tried to understand the relationship between individual elements within it.

The Danebury Environs Project II investigated rural Roman sites and started with the excavation of the Roman villa at Houghton Down in 1997. This was followed by excavations on villas at Grateley, Fullerton, Thruxton and Abbotts Ann, all Roman sites with Iron Age antecedents. The project field work finished in 2006, and the results have recently been published as The Danebury Environs Roman Programme: A Wessex Landscape During the Roman Era. It is these results that formed the subject of Professor Cunliffe’s talk.

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