A lifetime of digging up secrets

From an early age, Roger Mercer was fascinated by the historic secrets lurking beneath our feet. And through decades of indepth archaeology, the highly renowned professor – who was later awarded an OBE for services to archeology – travelled the country carrying out excavations.

Born in north London in 1944, he started digging for relics as a young boy after taking an interest in his grandfather’s flint collection. His first real experience of archaeological digs came when he was 12 and he joined various societies excavating parts of the Ermine Road once used by the Romans.

In 1964 he started studying archaeology at Edinburgh University, honing his skills at sites across Europe.

During this period he uncovered a cemetery dating from the 5th Century, with some of the relics now on display in Dumfries Museum.

After graduating, he returned to England, where he was offered an excavations director job in Cornwall. He had responsibility for a number of sites, including a neolithic settlement, a flint mine, and other sites near Stonehenge.

Six years on, he travelled back to Edinburgh, this time as a lecturer at the university he studied at. Over the next 15 years he delighted students with his energetic archaeological tales, offering them valuable insight into the industry with stories of his globe-trotting adventures.

For most of this time he was also the acting head of the university’s archaeology department – but still found time to carry out excavations.

In 1990 he was asked to head up the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and was later made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

After he retired, he spent years as president of the Society for Antiquaries of Scotland.

The 74-year-old is survived by his wife Susan and their two children.

Professor Roger Mercer