Simon James (archaeologist)
Simon James is an archeologist of the Iron Age and Roman period and an author. He is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester in England. His research interests are the Roman world and its interactions with the Celts and Middle Eastern peoples. Education and academic career. James obtained his PhD from University College London, and then moved to the British Museum, where he was an archaeological illustrator before becoming a museum educator. After several years as a Research Fellow at Durham University he joined the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of  Leicester in 2000. His research has focused on ancient warfare and especially the Roman military. He has studied the remarkably well-preserved Roman and Partho-Sasanian military remains from Dura-Europos, Syria. In reinterpreting the evidence for mines and counter-mines dug beneath the city's walls during the Sasanian Persian siege which finally destroyed Dura about AD 256, he concluded that the Sasanian attackers had used a Greek strategem on the Roman defenders: they asphyxiated about 20 of them with toxic smoke from burning bitumen and sulphur. This appears to be the earliest archaeologically-known instance of what we  would now call 'chemical warfare'. Influence on current cultural debates. It is his publications on the Ancient Celts that have drawn most public and media attention.