45 Facts About Mick Aston

Michael Antony Aston was an English archaeologist who specialised in Early Medieval landscape archaeology.

In 1988, Mick Aston teamed up with television producer Tim Taylor and together they created two shows which focused on bringing archaeology into British popular consciousness.

Mick Aston was responsible for identifying sites for excavation and for selecting specialists to appear on the show, and through the programme became well known to the viewing public for his trademark colourful jumpers and flowing, untidy hairstyle.

Mick Aston retired from his university posts in 2004, but continued working on Time Team until 2011 and in 2006 commenced writing regular articles for British Archaeology magazine until his death.

Mick Aston was born on 1 July 1946 into a working-class family in Oldbury, Worcestershire, to cabinet-maker Harold Mick Aston and his wife Gladys.

Mick Aston's father gave him two books on archaeology as a Christmas present, and he subsequently spent much time visiting archaeological sites, sometimes playing truant to do so.

The first of his family to attend university, Mick Aston studied geography at the University of Birmingham, albeit with a subsidiary in archaeology, graduating in 1967.

Mick Aston taught himself more about archaeology by enrolling in various excavations, and was influenced by such figures as his thesis supervisor Harry Thorpe, as well as the geographer Trevor Rowley and archaeologists Philip Rahtz and Philip Barker.

Mick Aston's dissertation was on the development of settlement in the West Penwith peninsula in Cornwall.

Mick Aston first gained full-time employment in 1970, working as a field officer at the Oxford City and County Museum in Oxfordshire.

Mick Aston brought archaeologist Phil Harding into the project in order to explain techniques of experimental archaeology to the audience.

Meanwhile, in August 1989, Mick Aston was promoted to the position of Reader in Landscape Archaeology at Bristol University.

Mick Aston continued to write on the subject, authoring the book Monasteries ; he initially planned to title the volume Monasteries in the Landscape but his publisher, Batsford, had insisted on the shorter title.

Whilst Taylor organised the film production side of the project with Channel 4, Mick Aston located suitable sites to excavate, and gathered together a team of specialists to appear on the show, among them field archaeologists Harding and Carenza Lewis, artist Victor Ambrus, and historian Robin Bush.

Mick Aston knew the actor and television presenter Tony Robinson after they had met on an archaeological course in Greece, and successfully requested that he present the show.

Mick Aston acted as chief archaeological adviser to the programme until the end of series nineteen, appearing in almost every episode, although he would later comment that when it first started he had no idea it would continue for so long.

Mick Aston found himself giving up to 20 public lectures a year on the subject of Time Team, describing the public feedback as "embarrassingly encouraging".

In 1996, Mick Aston was appointed to the position of Professor of Landscape Archaeology at Bristol University's Department of Continuing Education, a post designed explicitly for him.

Mick Aston proceeded to present his own six-episode series, Time Traveller, in which he explored various archaeological sites in the counties around Bristol.

The archaeology students of King Alfred's College, Winchester participated in a 10-year project led by Mick Aston to investigate the manor of Shapwick in Somerset.

Mick Aston published the results of the project in The Shapwick Project, Somerset: A Rural Landscape Explored, co-written with Christopher Gerrard, and this was followed by a more popular account of the project, Interpreting the English Village, in 2013.

Alongside his academic publications, Mick Aston wrote two books on archaeology for a more general audience, both of which were published by Channel 4 Books as a spin-off from the Time Team television series.

Mick Aston retired from Bristol University in 2004, subsequently becoming Professor Emeritus.

Mick Aston was appointed an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter, University of Durham, and the University of Worcester.

In 2006 Aston began writing a regular column, "Mick's Travels", for the bimonthly journal British Archaeology, the publication of the Council for British Archaeology.

In February 2012, it was reported that Mick Aston had left Time Team.

Mick Aston explained his position to the Western Daily Press, stating that the show's producers had made a number of changes to the series without consulting him, and that in the process Time Team had been "dumbed down", something he considered bad for archaeology.

In July 2012, Mick Aston received a lifetime achievement award at the British Archaeological Awards, with Bristol University's professor Mark Horton praising him for making "the past accessible to all".

On 24 June 2013, it was announced that Mick Aston had died unexpectedly of a brain haemorrhage at his home in Somerset.

Mick Aston's mission was sharing his passion for archaeology with ordinary people rather than keeping its secrets locked away behind the walls of Britain's universities.

Mick Aston was known for his "unfailing commitment and integrity", with his life being dominated by "old-fashioned idealism and loyalty".

Mick Aston was a vegetarian and a naturist, as well as an anarchist and an atheist.

Mick Aston's hobbies included gardening, pottery, astronomy, listening to classical music and cooking.

Mick Aston supported a number of charities and other causes, including Greenpeace, the Woodland Trust, Oxfam and Sightsavers International.

Mick Aston had a son, James, and a stepdaughter, Kathryn, both children of his former partner Carinne Allinson, from whom he separated in 1998.

Mick Aston later entered into a relationship with landscape historian Teresa Hall, who survived him on his death.

Mick Aston lived in what he called "a rather grotty '60s bungalow" in Somerset.

Mick Aston commented that throughout his life he suffered from poor health; he was afflicted with aspergillosis from the early 1980s, and was asthmatic.

Mick Aston suffered a brain haemorrhage in March 2003, and was hospitalised for two weeks.

Mick Aston did not believe that he would leave a significant legacy.

Mick Aston 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.

In British Archaeology magazine, Mick 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.

Mick Aston was one of the best academic archaeologists in the country, yet his real love was teaching ordinary people.

Mick Aston was the grumpiest old Black Country curmudgeon you could imagine, but he had a heart of absolute gold.

Mick Aston worked at the university for more than 25 years and was a familiar face on Time Team for 19 years.