In the mid-70s
he supervised large-scale excavations in the West Country
for the then Committee for Rescue Archaeology for Avon,
Gloucestershire and Somerset and then for the Central
Excavation Unit of the DOE's Directorate of Ancient
Monuments (the organisation that later became
English Heritage) at sites including Ardleigh Bronze
Age cemetery in Essex,
Dartmoor,
Stonehenge and
Hadrian's
Wall.
PJ was part
of the team which pioneered the UK's first computerised
archaeological databases in the late 1970s, using a
remote mainframe based in Cleveland, Ohio and wrote
a manual on field recording, which for many years was
used on English Heritage excavations. He was a data
capture consultant on major English Heritage projects
such as Raunds, Northamptonshire and
Maiden Castle.
He subsequently spent several years as a systems analyst
in industry and project managed the introduction of
integrated software packages on IBM mid-range computers,
PC local area networks and UNIX systems.
Having
returned to archaeology in 1999, he is currently
researching the early development of the settlement at
Hereford for a major publication due out late this year
or early next. He is also the author of the two
archaeological chapters in the book about
on the
Landscape Origins of the Wye Valley (LOWV) project
which will be published this autumn.
PJ is enthusiastic
about the archaeology and history of Herefordshire and
is very happy working in an environment where he is
able to make a modest contribution to the subject. Committed to the public dissemination of information
gained through fieldwork and research, he enjoys public
speaking and maintaining these web pages and those of
the LOWV project.
He is an
keen amateur cook and particularly likes updating the
Landscape Origins project's old
recipe pages. He recalls spending two and a half
days making Boston Baked Beans with such superb results
that everyone thought that they had come out of a can.
His cuisine is international peasant in style and he is
quite happy with garlic and wine, salt cod and ackees or
rampe and bhindi.
For more accomplished meals he enjoys restaurants and
has recently eaten at the
Stagg at Titley, the
Walnut Tree,
Purnells in
Birmingham, and the
Stewing Pot and
Castle House
in Hereford.
PJ enjoys
walking, pub quizzes, good wine and real ales. He is a
member of the Wye Valley Trekkers, a local group of
walkers. The Trekkers offer PJ the opportunity to combine walking
with good meals and sampling fine ales (but not all
at the same time).
Painting
of PJ at top left is by Charlotte Baron - click for
enlargement.
Second image
down is of PJ (wearing tie) in stained glass window
in the
Barrels public house in Hereford by the late
Christine Morgan - click for enlargement.
Bottom left
is PJ in the Barrels with a group of old friends, and a few newer ones
including the academic ex punk musician and noted Dylanologist,
Dr CP Lee. Click for CP's web site.
