page_title: Mick Aston
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Mick Aston / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Mick Aston and Tony Robinson, Time Team Series 8 shoot at Waltham Fields, Whittington, Gloucestershire, England, 2000, transmitted 2001
context_page_description: Michael Antony Aston FSA was an English archaeologist who specialised in Early Medieval landscape archaeology. Over the course of his career, he lectured at both the University of Bristol and University of Oxford and published fifteen books on archaeological subjects. A keen populariser of the discipline, Aston was widely known for appearing as the resident academic on the Channel 4 television series Time Team from 1994 to 2011.
  Born in Oldbury, Worcestershire, to a working-class family, Aston developed an early interest in archaeology, studying it as a subsidiary to geography at the University of Birmingham. In 1970, he began his career working for the Oxford City and County Museum and there began his work in public outreach by running extramural classes in archaeology and presenting a series on the subject for Radio Oxford. In 1974, he was appointed the first County Archaeologist for Somerset, there developing an interest in aerial archaeology and establishing a reputation as a pioneer in landscape archaeology—a term that he co-invented with Trevor Rowley—by authoring some of the earliest books on the subject.
context_section_description: Aston did not believe that he would leave a significant legacy behind him. He commented that this was the case because Britain's archaeological community had failed to develop the work that he had done with Time Team and with extramural teaching, and that all the public outreach he had accomplished would die with him. He felt that there was no "celebrity archaeologist" to replace him, and ultimately felt that the situation in British archaeology made him "angry and sad."
  In British Archaeology magazine, Aston was described as "the Mortimer Wheeler of our times" because, despite strong differences between their personalities, both had done much to bring archaeology to the British public. It went on to note that Aston reminded archaeologists that "their job is to do archaeology, and if that was an archaeology that meant nothing to ordinary people, there was no point in it—and government would be among the first to notice." Two of Aston's colleagues from Bristol University, Stuart Prior and Mark Horton, commented that "Mick brought archaeology into the living rooms of half the nation, and left a legacy that will shape the discipline for decades to come." Writing for the website of Antiquity, Christopher Gerrard described him as "perhaps the best-known face in British archaeology", adding that "in so many different areas of medieval archaeology his legacy will live on." Emma McFarnon described Aston as "Somerset's premier archaeologist" in her obituary on the This is Somerset website.
  Following Aston's death, former colleague Francis Pryor noted that Aston was a "remarkable archaeologist who could really dig", being a "warm, loving, nice man." Another colleague, Phil Harding, commented on Aston's "incredible knowledge" and "effortless way of making archaeology accessible to people." Tony Robinson wrote of him: "Mick was a real child of the '60s and a bit of a rebel, but he was also a series of contradictions. He was one of the best academic archaeologists in the country, yet his real love was teaching ordinary people. He was the grumpiest old Black Country curmudgeon you could imagine, but he had a heart of absolute gold." He also noted that "archaeology is now a subject that tens of thousands of people enjoy and value, and this is almost solely down to him." Ralph Lee, head of Channel 4's factual programming, described Aston as a "brilliant communicator" who helped make archaeology "so popular" in the UK.
caption: Mick Aston and Tony Robinson, Time Team series 8 shoot at Waltham Fields, Whittington, Gloucestershire, England, 2000
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