Timothy W. Potter

Who was Timothy W. Potter?

Timothy William Potter was a prominent archaeologist of ancient Italy, as well as of Roman Britain, best known for his focus on landscape archaeology.

Potter was educated at March Grammar School in March, Cambridgeshire, where his father Cedric Potter was headmaster. He followed his brother Christopher to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read anthropology and archaeology, graduating with a double first in 1966 and obtained his Ph.D. in 1974; his Ph.D. thesis was entitled Archaeological Topography of Central and Southern Ager Faliscus. In the 1980s Potter excavated at Stonea, a Roman settlement in the fens of Cambridgeshire.

Potter was a student of John Bryan Ward-Perkins and a member of the South Etruria Survey conducted by the British School at Rome. As part of the survey Potter worked on the Ager Faliscus leading to two influential books, A Faliscan Town in South Etruria: Excavations at Narce 1966-71 and The changing landscape of South Etruria. Potter also authored a popular course textbook entitled Roman Italy. The survey also led to his important excavations at Monte Gelato and Narce.

Potter taught at the University of Lancaster where he instituted a new archaeology program. In 1978 he moved to the British Museum and their department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities, serving as assistant keeper from 1978 to 1995 and keeper from 1995 until his death.