Francis Manning Marlborough Pryor was born on 13 January 1945 and is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain.
10 Facts About Francis Pryor
2.
Francis Pryor is best known for his discovery and excavation of Flag Fen, a Bronze Age archaeological site near Peterborough, as well as for his frequent appearances on the Channel 4 television series Time Team.
3.
Francis Pryor has now retired from full-time field archaeology, but still appears on television and writes books as well as being a working sheep farmer.
4.
Francis Pryor was educated at Temple Grove School in East Sussex, then at Eton College alongside his first cousin William Pryor, before studying archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a PhD in 1985.
5.
Francis Pryor married Sylvia in 1969, and migrated with her to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on a landed immigrant scheme.
6.
Francis Pryor returned to the UK in 1970, where the construction of the new town at Peterborough offered the opportunity to do large scale archaeology ahead of the planned development work.
7.
Francis Pryor has a daughter, Amy, from his first marriage.
8.
Francis Pryor was a founding member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists in 1982.
9.
Francis Pryor followed this with a third book on the site, published by Tempus in 2005; entitled Flag Fen: Life and Death of a Prehistoric Landscape, it represented what he considered to be a "major revision" of his 1991 work, for instance rejecting the earlier "lake village" concept.
10.
Francis Pryor was awarded an MBE "for services to tourism" in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours.