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Concept
Leslie Alcock
Summary
Leslie Alcock (24 April 1925 – 6 June 2006) was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, and one of the leading archaeologists of Early Medieval Britain. His major excavations included Dinas Powys hill fort in Wales, Cadbury Castle in Somerset and a series of major hillforts in Scotland.
Alcock was born at Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, near Manchester, son of clerk Philip John Alcock and Mary Ethel (née Bagley). He won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School in 1935. Alcock left school in 1942, subsequently joining the army and going on to serve as a captain in the Royal Gurkha Rifles during World War II. After demobilisation in 1946, he won a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read Modern History from 1946 to 1949. He pursued his interest in archaeology through the Oxford Archaeology Society, becoming its president. He met his wife Elizabeth during this period, and they were married in 1950, shortly before he left Britain to become the first director of the Archaeological Survey of Pakistan. He had previously returned to the sub-continent to serve as Sir Mortimer Wheeler's deputy on the excavations at Mohenjodaro. This relationship was to prove more valuable than the directorship of the survey, which he left after not being paid for several months. Back in Britain, a short stint as curator at the Abbey House Museum in Leeds in 1952 was followed by a post as a junior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at Cardiff University. He was to remain in Cardiff for 20 years, rising to the level of Reader, and undertaking his major southern British excavations at Dînas Powys in Wales (Alcock 1963) and South Cadbury (Alcock 1972). During this period, Cardiff was to emerge as one of the powerhouses of archaeology in British universities, and many of the leading figures in British archaeology today encountered Alcock as a teacher at that time.
The excavation at Cadbury Castle, South Cadbury, made Alcock's name. The hillfort had a traditional link with Camelot and the Arthurian legends, and Alcock made sure that the media were aware of his work.
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