My father, Martin Aitken, who has died aged 95, was a scientist who pioneered the application of physics to archaeology. He coined, with the archaeologist Christopher Hawkes, the term archaeometry, helping to make huge advances in dating finds from as early as the Lower Palaeolithic period.
He was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, the younger son of Percy Aitken, an engineer draughtsman, and his wife, Ethel (nee Brittain), who farmed with her mother until her marriage. Martin was educated at Stamford school and studied physics at Wadham College, Oxford, before becoming a fellow of Linacre College and later a member of the Royal Society. He became Oxford professor of archaeometry in 1985 before retiring in 1989.
In 1947 he married Joan (nee Killick), whom he met during the second world war at a radar station, when she was in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (the Waaf). They brought up five children in their cottage near Oxford, often taking us on archaeological digs.
Based at the Oxford Research Laboratory for archaeology and the history of art from 1957, Martin expanded on research into radiocarbon dating. He developed the proton magnetometer and Squid (superconducting quantum interference device) magnetometer to detect and date buried archaeological remains by measuring differences in the Earth’s magnetic intensity.
In the 1960s, he moved on to using thermoluminescence, a little known phenomenon at the time. When ceramic or lava are heated, they release electrons that become trapped within imperfections in their structure during firing. By measuring these, the length of time since their initial exposure to heat can be ascertained. Thermoluminescence enabled dating as far back as the Lower Palaeolithic period – 2.5m years BC to 200,000BC – for which dating was otherwise elusive.
He later developed a similar technique: optically stimulated luminescence, which involves the exposure of quartz and feldspar to intense light. This is now a significant method of dating sediment.
His work overturned contemporary assumptions regarding the age of several well-known ceramic artefacts. These included the so-called Hacilar ware, previously thought to be from ancient Turkey, and inscribed tablets found at Glozel, near Vichy, France, at one time thought to be Neolithic.
This latter work, primarily carried out by his student Doreen Stoneham, initiated his love of the Auvergne. He retired to Le Garret, a small hamlet in the Monts de Forez, in 1996, where he and Joan lived in the house they had bought six years earlier. When Joan died in 2005, he stayed on at Le Garret with the support of the local community and my sister, Jennifer.
My father was a generous, likable man with an insightful, logical mind. He was also a competitive sailor and keen camper.
Martin is survived by his daughters, Sara, Jennifer, Hannah and me, and by nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Niall, his son, died in 2015.
