Trustees
Professor Emeritus Dame Rosemary Cramp DBE
Dame Rosemary Cramp is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Durham University. After a period as an undergraduate and then lecturer at Oxford University she came to Durham in 1955, and has remained there ever since.
She has served on many institutions including as a Commissioner for The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and for English Heritage, as a Trustee of the British Museum, and as President of the Society of Antiquaries of London as well as of several Local Societies.
Her research and publications have included Northumbrian Settlement, the Relationship between Anglo-Saxon Literature and Archaeology, Early Medieval Monasteries, Anglo-Saxon Sculpture, Early Window Glass.
John Davidson BA (Hons)
John graduated in History at Leeds before teaching history in England and New Zealand. For many years he ran a newsagency business before moving to Wooler to work for the Glendale Gateway Trust.
An active member of the community, he has been Chair of Wooler Parish Council, a Councillor for Berwick Borough Council and a member of the Northumberland National Park Authority.
Professor Christopher Gerrard BA (Hons) PhD FSA
Chris studied Archaeology and Geology at Bristol University and completed his doctorate there on trade and medieval communities in south-west England. After a post-doctoral project took him to Spain on behalf of the British Museum, Chris worked first on the commercial side of archaeology at Cotswold Archaeology, then as a consultant, before joining the University of Winchester and subsequently Durham University in 2000.
He has been both a Head of Department there and a Deputy Head of Faculty but continues fieldwork projects in the UK, Spain and in the Azores. He is currently undertaking major excavations at Auckland Castle (County Durham). His interests lie in the study of landscapes and water features, the origins and evolution of medieval settlement, and natural disasters.
He has twice won the Best Archaeological Book award, for Interpreting the English Village (with Mick Aston, 2014) and for Lost Lives, New Voices (with four Durham colleagues, 2018).
Chris Jones BA MA
Chris studied History and Archaeology at Leicester University, taking his Masters in Landscape Archaeology at Sheffield University. He has worked in a variety of capacities ranging from the freelance and contracted (with North Pennines Heritage Trust), a Consultancy with RPS Planning, Transport and Environment and as Area Co-ordinator for the North Pennines AONB Partnership.
He has twenty years of experience working in the historic environment sector and has worked as the historic environment lead for Northumberland National Park since 2007 and is currently Lead Officer for the Historic Environment Group of National Parks in the UK.
Chris was formerly a Council Member and Secretary for RESCUE: The British Archaeological Trust (1998-2002) and former Chair of CBA North. He is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, and also serves on Association of Local Government Archaeology Officers (England) Executive Committee. Chris is also a Parent Governor of a school in Hexham.
Roger Miket BA (Hons) M-Litt FSA
Roger discovered archaeology while a schoolboy in the ‘60s, helping on an excavation at the Roman Fort of Arbeia, South Shields, and the twin monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. Graduating in History at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and later post-graduate studies in archaeology, Roger began work in the Museum of Antiquities/Department of Archaeology, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. In 1976 he was appointed Principal Keeper of Archaeology for Tyne & Wear Museums Service.
In 1986 he was invited to establish a museums service for the Isle of Skye & Lochalsh district in the Hebrides that might communicate something of the incredibly rich and diverse archaeological and historical heritage of these islands to its communities and visitors. At government reorganisation in 1995 he was appointed Manager of Culture & Leisure. In 1998 he took early retirement and in 2002 returned to Northumberland where he served for ten years as a trustee of The Glendale Gateway Development Trust.
In parallel to this, for many years he was a tutor in Archaeology for the Adult Education Departments of the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and later the University of Aberdeen. Subsequently he served for a number of years as an Advisory Member of the Northern Board of Scottish Natural Heritage. In 1990 he was co-founder and director of a small publishing house on the Isle of Skye,Maclean Press (https://openlibrary.org/publishers/Maclean_Press), dedicated to producing works on the heritage, history & archaeology of the Hebrides.
His archaeological research interests and publications range from the mesolithic to the 20th century. He remains fully active and involved in archaeology.
His research interests have led him to undertake survey and excavation of sites of all periods from the mesolithic to the later 19th century, and a number of books and publications on the history and archaeology of north Britain. Some of his Scottish titles were published by Maclean Press, a publishing company he founded and ran for over twelve years on the Isle of Skye
Dr Dave Petts MA PhD
David is Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of Northern England at Durham University and convenes the Department’s North-East England Research Group, having spent time working in commercial and local government archaeology before taking up his post in Durham in 2007. His main research interests focus on the social archaeology of the 1st millennium AD, with a particular focus on the development of Christianity.
As part of this he is carrying out fieldwork on the Holy Island on the site of the Anglo-Saxon monastery of Lindisfarne with collaborators DigVentures, funded through crowd-funding and a series of other grants including one from National Geographic. Whilst most of his current work is focused on the north of England, he has significant research interests in Wales and Scotland, as well as the wider North Sea world.
He has written books on the early medieval church in Wales and a more theoretical consideration of the process of conversion in the early medieval world in Britain and elsewhere. Outside Britain and Ireland he has had a particular long-standing interest in the early church in Brittany and Western Normandy.
In 2011 he was been chosen as one of the winners of BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) inaugural New Generation Thinkers Scheme. He is on the committee of the Chartered Institute for Archaeology’s Research and Impact Special Interest Group.
Professor Sarah Semple BA (Hons) Mst Hist Res Dphil
Sarah is currently Head of Department in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. After studying at the Institute of Archaeology in London (UCL) she spent several years working in commercial archaeology in the UK before completing DPhil in Archaelogy at The Queen’s College, Oxford and a research fellowship at St Cross College Oxford.
She took up a permanent lectureship at the University of Chester in 2004 before moving to the Department of Archaeology at Durham in 2006. As an early medieval archaeologist Sarah focuses on the landscapes and material culture of Britain and northern Europe, and her research is particularly connected to ways of understanding past human interactions with natural and human altered environments.
Her recently republished single-authored monograph Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England explores the centrality of the physical remains of the past in the shaping of early medieval identity and power, while Negotiating the North: Meeting Places in the Middles Ages in the North Sea Zone, provides the major outcomes from The Assembly Project, a collaborative international project that explored the development of administrative and assembly practices in northern Europe from AD 300-1500.
Long-running research interests in death and burial, landscape and identity, also promoted a successful bid for a major Leverhulme-funded project People and Place. The Making of the Kingdom of Northumbria which is using the burial records of northern Britain to explore the health, wealth, ethnicity and lifestyle of the first Northumbrians, charting the emergence of one of the largest kingdoms in early medieval Britain in terms of migration, mobility, social stratification, and political aggregation AD 300-800.
Peter Topping, BA (Hons), PhD, FSA, MCIfA
Peter’s background is in multi-period landscape analysis and has undertaken excavation and fieldwork in the Northumberland Cheviots since 1970.
He has worked for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and English Heritage for over twenty-eight years, on projects as varied as Neolithic flint mines and causewayed enclosures, the Stonehenge World Heritage Site landscape, the South-East Northumberland Cheviots, medieval settlements, industrial monuments and Cold War defence sites.
He has also participated in projects led by the US National Park Service in Ohio and Minnesota, and is currently directing a long-term project on the hillfort and its environs on Wether Hill in the Breamish Valley of the Northumberland Cheviots.
He has published extensively and currently co-editing with Dr Julie Gardiner, a new Oxbow Books series entitled ‘American Landscapes’ accessible accounts of archaeological/cultural landscapes, defined by region, theme or time periods.
Kate Wilson BA (Hons) PG-dip FSA
Kate studied Architecture at the Polytechnic of Central London (now Westminster University), Archaeology at Durham University and postgraduate studies in Building Conservation at Bournemouth University with the late John Ashurst.
She recently retired after 35 years in the heritage sector working for various organisations including Historic England, where she led multidisciplinary teams that provided advice, skills and services to support local communities looking after historic places and landscapes in the north of England.
Kate continues to work in the north as a Trustee with the Tyne & Wear Building Preservation Trust helping to care for heritage by supporting change in favour of the adaptive reuse of local assets to maintain and protect our valuable heritage places and spaces. She is also a Professor in Practice with the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. This is a new role that will enable her to share her skills directly with staff and students and to bring her practical experience to the classroom.
Brian Cosgrove
Brian is an Education Media Development Lead, specialising in the use of creative technology across the curriculum. Engaging students from KS2 to KS5, he develops and delivers innovative content which encompasses videography and editing, photography, lighting, sound recording, music technology, graphic design, web development, traditional and computer animation as well as digital and mixed-media art. He specialises in working with SEND students and is currently developing a tracking and assessment system for soft and behavioural skills in autistic and ADHD student development.
Brian is passionate about the use of media and the internet in the popular dissemination of the history and heritage of northern England and involves education and community connections wherever possible. He has worked on major excavations and projects in the region contributing video and digital content, drone and ground based photogrammetric surveys, 3D modelling and virtual reality.
Brian has worked with the Bamburgh Research Project, The Northumberland National Park, Archaeological Research Services, The Northumberland Wildlife Trust, The Alnwick Garden, CITiZAN, Timeline and the Cresswell Pele Tower Project. His latest work involves the use of photogrammetry to develop models based on digitally enhanced archive images.
If he has any spare time Brian simply carries on doing all of the above, with a focus on photography and a secret life creating electronic music.