Professor Stephen Rippon

I am a landscape archaeologist whose teaching and research on the Roman and medieval periods in Britain and mainland North West Europe. My early work focused on the history of wetland reclamation and explored how human communities changed from simply exploiting the rich natural resources that wetlands have to offer, through modifying these environments to make them more suitable for agriculture, to fully transforming them through reclamation.

     My current research is exploring the origin and development of regional variation in landscape character from the Roman period through to the present day. I use interdisciplinary analysis of archaeological, cartographic, documentary, place-name and architectural evidence, with examples published in Beyond the Medieval Village: The Diversification of Landscape Character in Southern Britain (2008), Making Sense of An Historic Landscape (2012), The Fields of Britannia (2015), and Kingdom, Civitas and County (2018).

     I am also developing a range of interdisciplinary approaches to studying the landscape, some of which are included in Historic Landscape Analysis (2004 [reprinted 2008; Second, revised Edition 2013]). I have worked collaboratively with historians, for example with Peter Claughton in Mining in a Medieval Landscape: The Royal Silver Mines of the Tamar Valley (2009), and John Blair in Planning in the Early Medieval Landscape (2020). I also work closely with palaeoenvironmental specialists, for example in reconstructing past patterns of land use, for example in the Manifestations of Empire project with Tudur Davis and Andy Season, and the post-excavation programme for Dainton Elms Cross in Ipplepen, Devon (for which the major programme of public engagement was supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund).

     My recent major AHRC-funded Exeter: A Place in Time project was a collaboration with the University of Reading, Cotswold Archaeology, Exeter City Council, and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. We have written up four of the major excavations carried out in Exeter during the 1970s, and carried out programmes of modern scientific analysis on a range of artefact types including pottery, archaeometallurgical debris, and animal bones. Other contributions to the two volumes (published by Oxbow Books in 2021) include an overview of the dendrochonological work carried out in Exeter, studies of the Roman animal bones, coins, querns and pottery, and the medieval pottery and human remains from four cemeteries.   

     My current major externally funded project is 'Hidden Kingdoms' (https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/projects/archaeology/hiddenkingdoms/): an exploration of what happened to landscape and society on South West England at the end of the Roman period.

      I have served as the University's Dean of the University's Faculty of Graduate Research, President of the Medieval Settlement Research Group, Treasurer of the Society for Medieval Archaeology, and Chairman of the Severn Estuary Levels Research Committee and the Council for British Archaeology South West Region. I am currently President of the Society for Medieval Archaeology.

At undergraduate and masters level I teach on the landscapes of Roman and medieval Britain. I supervise research students (PhD, MPhil, MA by Research, and research degrees by Publication) across a wide range of topics in the fields of medieval and landscape archaeology.

Biography

I studied for my BA(hons) in Archaeology at the University of Reading where I stayed to undertake my PhD under the supervision of Professors Grenville Astill and Michael Fulford. The title of my thesis was "Landscape evolution and wetland reclamation around the Severn Estuary" (which was published in 1997 as The Severn Estuary: Landscape Evolution and Wetland Reclamation). I then became a Research Fellow in the Archaeology Department at Reading and completed the pioneering Gwent Levels Historic Landscape Study (published in 1996 as The Gwent Levels: Landscape Evolution and Wetland Reclamation). I then took up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship which entailed a comparative study of the changing ways in which human communities first exploited, then modified, and ultimately transformed (through reclamation) wetland landscapes in southern Britain and mainland North West Europe (published in 2000 as The Transformation of Coastal Wetlands). I was appointed to a lectureship in Archaeology at the University of Exeter in 1996, and am now Professor of Landscape Archaeology. I have been a member of the University Senate and Council, and Dean of Graduate Research.

Recent and current appointments to professiuonal bodies:

Panel member for the Polish National Science Centre (2021-present)

Panel member of for the Uk Natural Environment Research Council (Isotopes Panel) (2020-2024)

Chair the advisory board for the Leverhulme Trust/English Heritage funded Roman Rural Settlement Project at the University of Reading (2012-15)

Peer Review College Member, Arts and Humanities Research Council (2004 to 2013)

Editorial Positions:

Previous editor of Archaeology in the Severn Estuary

Member of the editorial board of Landscape History

Member of the editorial board for the Brepols Monograph Series Environmental Histories of the North Atlantic World, c.500-1900

Memberships of Societies and Professional Bodies:

Fellow of the Higher Education Acdemy

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London

Previous positions have included:

President of the Society for Medieval Ar chaeology (2020-22)

President of the Medieval Settlement Research Group (2012-14)

Chairman of the Council for British Archaeology South West

President of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society (2010-11)

Chairman of the Severn Estuary Levels Research Committee

Treasurer of the Society for Medieval Archaeology (2008-14)

Secretary of the Society for Landscape Studies,

Council member and Treasurer of the Society for Medieval Archaeology,

Society memberships

Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society

Cambridge Antiquarian Society

Cornwall Archaeologoical Society

Devon Archaeological Society

Essex Archaeological Society

Medieval Settlement Research Group

Norfolk Archaeological Society

Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society

Society for Landscape Studies

Society for Medieval Archaeology

Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History

Research supervision:

I supervise research students studying a range of topics across a broad range of fields including:

• Romano-British, medieval and post medieval landscapes
• The archaeology of South West Britain
• The Roman to medieval transition
• Wetland archaeology and landscapes
• Historic landscape characterisation

Please contact me on s.j.rippon@ex.ac.uk if you are interested in undertaking research.

To find out more about studying for a research degree with us, please see our Graduate School pages at http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/graduateschool/’.