death_date birth_place nationality fields birth_date known_for article_title name
28 february 1963 lichfield , england british archaeology 15 january 1872 excavation village and meare lake village of avebury , cadbury camp , glastonbury lake harold st george gray
 harold st george gray
harold st george gray

harold st george gray -lrb- 15 january 1872 -- 28 february 1963 -rrb- was a british archaeologist .
he was involved in the pitt rivers museum in oxford and later was the librarian-curator of the museum for the somerset archaeological and natural history society .
gray was born in 1872 in lichfield .
in 1888 he started working for the archaeologist augustus pitt rivers and trained in archaeological techniques and later took over as his secretary .
in 1899 he became assistant to henry balfour at the pitt rivers museum before leaving to become curator at the museum in taunton , which later became the museum of somerset , where he stayed until 1949 and wrote frequent papers for their journal .
during this time he was involved in the dismissal of frederick bligh bond as archaeologist at glastonbury abbey when he claimed that much of his work was helped by the `` spirits of glastonbury monks '' .
after leaving pitt-rivers he led the excavations at arbor low in 1901 and 1902 , and then worked on the rings on bodmin moor .
in 1904 he was involved with arthur bulleid in the excavation of glastonbury lake village and later at meare lake village .
one of gray 's contributions to archaeology was the scale of the excavations undertaken and the detailed records kept following the teaching of his mentor pitt-rivers .
he also developed techniques of making three dimensional models of the sites .
from 1908 to 1913 he was responsible for excavations at maumbury rings , and from 1908 to 1923 at avebury .
his discovery of over forty antler picks at or near the bottom of the henge ditch at avebury proved that it had been dug out of solid chalk to a depth of using red deer antlers as picks .
in 1922 he excavated cadbury camp , and from 1926 to 1929 he was at windmill hill , avebury with alexander keiller .
in 1943 he bought the treasurer 's house in martock to preserve it .
his wife bequeathed it to the national trust in 1970 .
gray was president of the somerset archaeological and natural history society from 1951 to 1952 and died in 1963 .
