- published: 05 Feb 2014
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Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe, CBE, known professionally as Barry Cunliffe (born 10 December 1939) is a former Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford, a position held from 1972 to 2007. He is now Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology.
Cunliffe's decision to become an archaeologist was sparked off at the age of nine by the discovery of Roman remains on his uncle's farm in Somerset. After studying at Portsmouth Northern Grammar School (now the Mayfield School) and reading archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, he became a lecturer at the University of Bristol in 1963. Fascinated by the Roman remains in nearby Bath he threw himself into a programme of excavation and publication.
In 1966 he became an unusually young professor when he took the chair at the newly-founded Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. There he became involved in the excavation (1961–68) of the Fishbourne Roman Palace in Sussex. Another site in southern England led him away from the Roman period. He began a long series of summer excavations (1969–88) of the Iron Age hill fort at Danebury, Hampshire and was subsequently involved in the Danebury Environs Programme (1989–95). His interest in Iron Age Britain and Europe generated a number of publications and he became an acknowledged authority on the Celts,