Martin AitkenFRS,FSA (11 March 1922 - 15 June 2017)

Abstract

Martin Jim Aitken was born on 11 March 1922 and educated at Stamford School, Lincolnshire. He went up to Wadham College, Oxford, to read physics, but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War, in which he served as a Technical Radar Officer in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Burma (Myanmar). After completion of his Oxford doctorate, he undertook research in nuclear physics, using a small electron synchrotron. In 1957, he joined the university's newly formed Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA), founded two years earlier by Teddy Hall with the support of archaeologist Christopher Hawkes and the physicist Lord Cherwell, as its second Deputy Director (the first Deputy Director was Dr Stuart Young). He began to apply magnetic methods to both the dating and location of archaeological kilns and hearths. In 1958, at the invitation of the archaeologist Graham Webster, he undertook the first archaeological proton magnetometer survey, on the Roman city of Durobrivae, near Water Newton, Cambridgeshire, detecting a kiln amongst other features. His instrument was a version of the device that had been tested by the Army for the detection of plastic mines. Also in 1958, the Oxford laboratory published the first volume of the journal Archaeometry, originally subtitled the Bulletin of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University, but including international contributions from Volume 3 onwards. He was an editor until 1989. His first book, Physics and archaeology, was published in 1961. In 1962, Martin organized a day meeting for archaeologists who had purchased proton magnetometers, which became an annual meeting. The scope of the meetings broadened in 1969 to become the ‘Symposium on Archaeometry and Archaeological Prospection’, held in Oxford until 1975. In 1976, with the meeting in Edinburgh, it became the ‘International Symposium on Archaeometry and Archaeological Prospection’, and in 1980 (Paris) the ‘International Symposium on Archaeometry’, which continues to this day as a biannual international conference. As well as proton magnetometers, he also developed the use of fluxgate magnetic gradiometers for the detection of buried remains, and was involved (with Derek Walton) in the development of the first SQUID cryogenic magnetometer (a device capable of measuring extremely subtle magnetic fields) to be used in the United Kingdom. From the 1960s, he was involved in the development of thermoluminescence dating (TL), to date ceramic materials such as pottery, brick and tiles. He further developed the method by using blue/green light or infrared radiation instead of heat. This optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating has become one of the most powerful methods for the dating of sediments in both archaeological and environmental contexts. He published a book on thermoluminescence dating in 1985, and an introduction to optical dating in 1998. His best-known book, Science-based dating in archaeology (1990), became the standard undergraduate text on the subject. He became a Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford, in 1965 and Professor of Archaeometry in 1985. He continued his interests in archaeomagnetism and luminescence dating up until his retirement in 1989, publishing, in addition to his books, more than 150 scientific papers. He won the Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics, and the Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology of the Archaeological Institute of America. In recognition of his scientific achievements, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983—a tribute not only to his outstanding ability as a scientist who chose to work in archaeology, but also a recognition of the fact that science in archaeology had come of age. He has almost single-handedly promoted the view that archaeology is part of a wider scientific endeavour, perhaps best encapsulated in his contribution to the 1981 Smithsonian round table discussion on Future directions in archaeometry, which he entitled ‘Archaeometry does not only serve archaeology’. He was truly one of the ‘founding fathers’ of archaeometry. He married Joan Killick, with whom he had four daughters and a son. In retirement, he and his wife moved to a house near Clermont Ferrand in France. An account of his contribution to the subject was published in 1990, following his retirement from RLAHA in 1989 (Sayre, E. V., and Tite, M. S., 1990, On the retirement of Teddy Hall and Martin Aitken, Archaeometry, 32, 3–6).