Search results for ""author philip rahtz""

This is the life-story of one of Britain's most influential and colourful archaeologists, whose career has spanned the second half of the twentieth century. After earlier short-lived careers in accountancy, the Royal Air Force, photography and school-teaching, Philip Rahtz stumbled into archaeology after the Second World War - and never looked back. Having started as a freelance field archaeologist, he was appointed to a lectureship in the University of Birmingham in 1963, and in 1978 he founded a new department at the University of York. Over the years he has excavated many important sites of all periods in England such as the Saxon and medieval palaces at Cheddar, the Cistercian Bordesley Abbey and several Dark Age sites in Somerset, including Glastonbury Tor and the 500-grave cemetery at Cannington. He has also dug in Yugoslavia, Greece, Spain and Ghana. But Professor Rahtz's story is much more than a catalogue of remarkable excavations. We learn about his family, childhood and adolescence; the progression from backward boy to professor; his philosophy, political stance, his musical and other tastes - and his strongly held views on sexuality. His easy, anecdotal style, spiced with some fairly scandalous stories, will ensure that this is a life-story that will appeal to anyone in archaeology.

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Glastonbury, with the distinctive landmark of the Tor, is a familiar name to many. Its fame lies not simply in its renowned festival, but in its legendary associations with King Arthur and with Joseph of Arimathea, whose staff was supposed to have grown into Glastonbury Tor. Philip Rahtz has excavated extensively in and around Glastonbury, and disentangles the myths from the truths, giving a comprehensive survey of this remarkable place from the earliest times to the present day.

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