Professor Keith Ray

Overview

I have had 50 years’ active involvement in archaeology, both through an academic career (PhD Cambridge, 1988, on the archaeology of Igbo Ukwu, eastern Nigeria), and a teaching post in the University of Nigeria (1982-4), and through hands-on professional conservation and outreach employment. Between 1989 and 2014 I worked as an Archaeological Officer in Oxfordshire and then Plymouth, and then as County Archaeologist in Herefordshire (see ‘biography’ tab). I have undertaken fieldwork in southern Britain (especially, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Herefordshire), in Scotland (Aberdeenshire, Arran, Stirlingshire), and Wales (Ceredigion). I have worked overseas in France, Norway and West Africa.

I currently work part-time as an archaeological consultant (Director, Southern Marches Archaeological Practice, Hereford), but otherwise I am actively engaged in research (see ‘Research’ tab) and in writing (see ‘Publications’).

Publications

Selected recent publications:

• 2018 a (with Julian Thomas) Neolithic Britain: The transformation of social worlds (Oxford University Press)
• 2018 b ‘Herefordshire in Roman Britain’, 83-114 in Roger White and Mike Hodder (eds) Clash of Cultures? The Romano-British Period in the West Midlands (Oxbow)
• 2018 c ‘Material Metaphor’ entry in S Lopez-Varela The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences eMRW (Wiley)
• 2017 (with Peter Dorling and Paul White) ‘Herefordshire: from the Middle Bronze Age to the Later Iron Age’, 70-84 in Derek Hurst (ed) Westward on the High-Hilled Plains: The Later Prehistory of the West Midlands (Oxbow)
• 2016 ‘Prehistoric and Roman Hereford’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon Hereford’, 1-28 in Andy Johnson and Ron Shoesmith (eds) The Story of Hereford (Logaston Press)
• 2016 (with Ian Bapty) Offa’s Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth Century Britain (Windgather/Oxbow, Oxford)
• 2015 The Archaeology of Herefordshire: An Exploration (Logaston Press)

Current publication projects:

I am currently editing/co-writing a series of monographs for the series Herefordshire Studies in Archaeology (Archaeopress, Oxford) arising from the project-based fieldwork of Herefordshire Archaeology (and some archaeological contractors) between 1999 and 2010.