I was saddened to hear about the passing, on 5th October, of Prof Tim Darvill. Another victim of cancer, after a short illness, at the age of 66.
Tim was of course one of the leading archaeologists of his day, with a wide range of interests and an impressive publications list. He spent most of his academic career in the University of Bournemouth. His work on Stonehenge and the bluestones was of course well known, and in West Wales his extensive chapter on "Neolithic and Bronze Age Pembrokeshire" written with Geoff Wainwright and published in Vol 1 of the Pembrokeshire County History (2016) was and is hugely influential.
I disagreed with some of his ideas and agreed with others, and occasionally we exchanged messages and opinions. I always found him polite and reasonable in his responses to my ideas, and he was kind enough to offer and provide help in the analysis of the Newall Boulder stored in Salisbury Museum. Some of the data which he provided were incorporated into my article published in Quaternary Science Journal in June of this year.
To his credit, Tim recognized and acknowledged disputes in his field of interest, and was happy to cite the work of those with whom he disagreed. Not everybody does that......... He was one of the few archaeologists who was prepared to go on the record, in print, to express his concern about the elaborate narrative woven by Parker Pearson and his team around the Pembrokeshire bluestones.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/11/darvill-on-waun-mawn-myth.html
Tim's 2022 article was important, not least in demonstrating that I was not alone in having serious doubts about the reliability of the evidence and the spectacular claims made in recent years by Parker Pearson, Ixer, Bevins and others.
May he rest in peace.
5 comments:
I'm shocked to hear the news. I knew him in passing, meeting every now and then, always part of the crowd 'over there in the next field', rather than in what I was working on. A great loss, we will miss him greatly.
Very sad to hear of Tim's passing. Not sure I would have bothered to update the book had it not been for him.
Very sad. Worthy enthusiast archaeologist (as many have commented on the Cotswold Archaeology site). Thank the Lord he willingly assisted Brian with scientific investigations regarding the Newall 1924 erratic boulder! Saw him excavating at Stonehenge in 2008 with his friend Geoffrey Wainwright whom I spoke to at that time. Also watched him give a joint Stonehenge talk at Salisbury Museum along with MPP, Julian Richards and Mike Pitts, all 4 having excavated at "the old Salisbury Museum ruin" the most recently.
....... "the old Salisbury PLAIN ruin"....
A real and very sad loss to the archaeological profession. Tim's writing was always clear and accessible, he was scientific and thorough, but also not afraid to venture into the more fringe areas, such as the SPACES project he and Geoff Wainwright devised and carried out over several years in Preseli. Will be much missed.
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