University of Kent

Profile

Jake completed his PhD at the University of Kent in 2005. The study was entitled: ‘Styles of Romano-British cremation and associated deposition in south-east England’. He had previously gained a First Class Hons. degree in Classical Studies with the Department (1996-9); he received the Edward A. Lamb Award for the highest exam marks in the Faculty of Humanities; he gained a bursary to study ancient Greek.

From January 2007 he has worked with Kent County Council as
Project Co-ordinator for the 'South East Research Framework for the Historic Environment'. The task entails co-ordinating, editing and writing a Resource Assessment, Research Agenda and Research Framework for the Historic Environment of East Sussex, Kent, Surrey and West Sussex.

Documents relating to the South East Research Framework can be viewed on-line:

http://www.kent.gov.uk/publications/environment/serf-conference.htm

http://www.kent.gov.uk/publications/environment/serf-seminar-notes.htm

In the autumn of 2008 Jake took up a Research Officer post with Canterbury Archaeological Trust. He has previously worked on Canterbury City's Urban Archaeological Database, seeing this public resource to completion for the City Council, English Heritage and the people of Canterbury and east Kent.

Jake is an active field archaeologist and has an ongoing project focused on the Roman Cemeteries of Canterbury.

Between September 1999 and January 2007 Jake worked at the University of Kent as a part-time tutor in Classical and Archaeological Studies and Comparative Literature. He undertook lecturing and seminar leadership on a wide range of modules (see teaching).

Prior to studying the ancient world and teaching he was a professional musician, touring the UK, Europe and the Middle East.

 

Current Projects

Canterbury’s Roman Cemeteries

Funded by the Roman Research Trust, and in association with Canterbury City Council, this investigation of the various cemeteries of Roman Canterbury, using documentary (published and ‘grey’ literature reports) and material culture archives (including museum and private collections) will characterise the extent, chronological development and nature of Canterbury’s Roman cemeteries.

The survey will focus on reconstructing the funerary sequence in order to understand the traditional as well as the more diverse aspects of funerary practice in Roman Canterbury. From a planning and curatorial perspective, the work will raise consciousness of the cemeteries by characterising them as ‘monuments’. Not only is each cemetery area still only vaguely defined in terms of its original extent, morphology and chronological development, but the various degrees of destruction that each has undergone as a result of post-depositional processes is largely unknown.

The project will map the known extent of the various cemetery areas and the extent of disturbance that has already occurred, thereby identifying areas most likely to be either largely or completely undisturbed. This information (easily generated as thematic maps in the Urban Archaeological Database GIS) will be vital in the setting of research designs that inform the archaeological component of the continuing planning process.

A programme of extra-curricular lectures to local schools, colleges, universities and societies will present the results of the survey as a vehicle for discussions of Romano-British mortuary ritual, and mortuary ritual in general. The information produced will also form a pilot survey seeking out venues for prospective future projects, such as a Community Archaeological Project, and research-based excavations.

 

 

Publications

Books

Forthcoming (in prep): Death as a Process: Funerals in the Roman World with John Pearce, to be published by Oxbow Books. The volume comprises an augmented conference session proceedings from the Roman Archaeology Conference 2007. Jake's contributions being: ‘Canterbury’s Roman Cemeteries’ and 'Process and Polysemy’.

Forthcoming (in prep): A Resource Assessment and Research Agenda for the historic environment of South East of England. English Heritage.
(Jake is writing the chapter on the medieval period as well the introduction and conclusion, and editing the volume).

2004: With B. Croxford, H. Eckardt and J. Meade (eds.) TRAC 2003: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Leicester 2003. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

2003: With G. Carr and E. Swift (eds.). TRAC 2002: Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Canterbury 2002. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Articles

2008. Classification and analysis of archaeological contexts for the reconstruction of Early Romano-British cremation funerals, Britannia, 39, 145-60.

2007: A specific problem? Detection, protection and excavation of Romano-British cemeteries through competitive tendering. In B. Croxford, N. White and R. Roth (eds) Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Cambridge 2006. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

2005: Reconstructing syntheses in Romano-British cremation. In J. Bruhn, B. Croxford and D. Grigoropoulos (eds.) TRAC 2004: Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Durham 2004. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 16–26

2002: Acculturation and the Temporal Features of Ritual Action. In M. Curruthers, C. van Driel-Murray, A. Gardner, J. Lucas, L. Revell and E. Swift (eds.) TRAC 2001: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Glasgow 2001. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 73─82

 

Teaching

For seven years, to 2007, Jake undertook a range of teaching in Classical and Archaeological Studies at Kent, including lectures, seminars and tutorials. This was on both the full and part-time programmes.

On the Archaeological studies side he has taught on the following modules: Roman Britain, the Archaeology of the Western Roman Empire, The Romans in Kent, The Archaeology of Death, Introduction to Archaeology, and Archaeology and Archaeologists.

On the Classical studies side he has taught on the following modules: Classical Mythology, Greek Theatre and Beginners Latin.