Early life and education: 1946–69 Aston was born on 1 July 1946 into a working-class family in
Oldbury,
Worcestershire, to cabinet-maker Harold Aston and his wife Gladys. He developed an early interest in archaeology, although teachers at
Oldbury Grammar School attempted to dissuade him from pursuing it. His father gave him two books on archaeology as a Christmas present, and he subsequently spent much time visiting archaeological sites, sometimes
playing truant to do so. The first of his family to attend university, Aston studied geography at the
University of Birmingham, albeit with a subsidiary in archaeology, graduating in 1967. He taught himself more about archaeology by enrolling in various
excavations, and was influenced by such figures as his thesis supervisor Harry Thorpe, as well as the geographer Trevor Rowley and archaeologists
Philip Rahtz and Philip Barker. His dissertation was on the development of settlement in the West
Penwith peninsula in
Cornwall.
Early career: 1970–87 Aston first gained full-time employment in 1970, working as a field officer at the Oxford City and County Museum in
Oxfordshire. For a time living in a tent, he worked on the
sites and monuments record and taught several extramural classes while based at the museum. This extramural teaching fitted closely with Aston's staunch belief that archaeology should be open to all who were interested in it. As part of this devotion to public outreach, he presented a radio series on archaeology that was broadcast on
Radio Oxford. In 1974 he moved to
Taunton to become the first
County Archaeologist for
Somerset, where he set up a new site record and oversaw the excavation of sites revealed by the construction of the
M5 motorway. Again he also taught extramural adult education classes, this time for the
University of Bristol. It was here that he developed a passion for
aerial archaeology, and would often charter private planes in order to undertake aerial photography. Becoming a pioneer of landscape archaeology, along with
Trevor Rowley he was responsible for coining the term in their 1974 book,
Landscape Archaeology. With archaeologist James Bond he authored
The Landscape of Towns (1976), in which he extended his use of landscape archaeology to urban areas. Recognising his contribution to the discipline, in 1976, he was elected a Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries of London. Tiring of his position as county archaeologist, finding it "too safe, pensionable and superannuable", in 1978 he returned to Oxfordshire to take up a temporary position as a tutor in archaeology and local studies at
Oxford University's External Studies Department. That year he co-ran his first study tour to Greece with Peter Hardy; he would continue to run these annually for a number of years, most often visiting
Santorini. In 1979 he returned to the West Country as tutor in archaeology at the
University of Bristol's Extra-Mural Department, through which he organised weekend and evening courses throughout the region, introducing thousands of interested people to archaeology. During this period he also authored
Interpreting the Landscape (1985).
Founding Time Team: 1988–95 (left) and Roman expert
Guy de la Bédoyère (right) during a
Time Team dig In June 1988 the producer
Tim Taylor invited Aston to work on a new four-episode television series for
Channel 4 called
Time Signs, broadcast in June and July 1991. The series focused on the historical development of the area about to be flooded by the
Roadford Reservoir in
Devon, making heavy use of archaeological data. Aston brought archaeologist
Phil Harding into the project in order to explain techniques of
experimental archaeology to the audience. Meanwhile, in August 1989, Aston was promoted to the position of
Reader in Landscape Archaeology at Bristol University. He also continued to write on the subject, authoring the book
Monasteries (1993); he had initially planned to title the volume
Monasteries in the Landscape but his publisher,
Batsford, had insisted on the shorter title. Aston and Taylor subsequently decided to work together on a new archaeological television series, devising the format for
Time Team. Whilst Taylor organised the film production side of the project with Channel 4, Aston located suitable sites to excavate, and gathered together a team of specialists to appear on the show, among them field archaeologists Harding and
Carenza Lewis, artist
Victor Ambrus, and historian
Robin Bush. He knew the actor and television presenter
Tony Robinson after they had met on an archaeological course in
Greece, and successfully requested that he present the show. From an early stage, they had agreed that every episode would feature a practical process or a re-enactment alongside the field archaeology.
Time Team was first broadcast in 1994, and would attract around four million viewers per episode, with Aston becoming "an icon to the viewing public." Writing in
The Guardian,
Christopher Dyer noted that Aston's "unkempt hair and beard, multicoloured sweaters and
Black Country accent made him instantly recognisable" to the British public, describing him as "a popular success" who had attracted "a large public following". Aston acted as chief archaeological adviser to the programme until the end of series nineteen, appearing in almost every episode, although he would later comment that when it first started he had no idea it would continue for so long. Aston enjoyed working with the
Time Team crew, commenting that they were "a great gang ... There are some real party people." Aston saw
Time Team as an extension of his work as an extramural tutor, telling a 2013 interviewer that it was "a way of reaching 3 million people rather than 30 people in the village hall." Commenting on the popularity of
Time Team, and its role in exposing the British public to archaeology, in a 2010 interview Aston remarked that "My motive was to get as many people as possible interested in archaeology, because we [in the profession] all enjoy it and think it interesting. That was my personal aim ... and on that basis I think it is a success."
Time Team encouraged wider public interest in archaeology and led to increasing numbers of students applying to study archaeological courses at British universities, while subscriptions to
Current Archaeology magazine quadrupled to 18,000 in the show's first five years. In autumn 1998, Channel 4 started a
Time Team fan club, which had 16,000 members within a few months, while Aston became a supporter of the
Council for British Archaeology's Young Archaeologists' Club (YAC), and with Harding gave regular talks to YAC branches. Aston found himself giving up to 20 public lectures a year on the subject of
Time Team, describing the public feedback as "embarrassingly encouraging".
Professorship: 1996–2011 In 1996, Aston was appointed to the position of Professor of Landscape Archaeology at Bristol University's Department of Continuing Education, a post designed explicitly for him. In 1998 the post was moved to the Centre for the Historic Environment within the Department of Archaeology. He would subsequently be instrumental in setting up the master's degree in archaeology and screen media at the department. By 1996, Aston was feeling "a bit frustrated" with
Time Team, primarily because he was always "number two" to Robinson. He proceeded to present his own six-episode series,
Time Traveller, in which he explored various archaeological sites in the counties around Bristol. It was broadcast on
HTV over July and August 1997, and gained the largest local audiences for its time slot. The archaeology students of
King Alfred's College, Winchester also participated in a 10-year project led by Aston to investigate the manor of
Shapwick in
Somerset. It became the "type site for the study of the development of medieval villages". Aston published the results of the project in
The Shapwick Project, Somerset: A Rural Landscape Explored (2007), co-written with Christopher Gerrard, and this was followed by a more popular account of the project,
Interpreting the English Village, in 2013. Alongside his academic publications, Aston wrote two books on archaeology for a more general audience, both of which were published by
Channel 4 Books as a spin-off from the
Time Team television series. The first of these was ''Time Team's Timechester: A Companion to Archaeology
, co-written with Carenza Lewis and Phil Harding and first published in 2000. Based around the fictional British town of Timechester, the book looks at how the settlement would have progressed from the Palaeolithic through to the modern day, and examines the remains that each period would have left behind in the archaeological record. This was followed in 2002 by Archaeology is Rubbish: A Beginner's Guide
, which Aston co-wrote with Tony Robinson and dedicated to Harding. Archaeology is Rubbish'' describes a fictional excavation site in an ordinary suburban back garden, and discusses the evidence from different archaeological periods, the field methods and techniques used by the excavators, and the legal proceedings and problems that archaeologists in Britain face. Aston retired from Bristol University in 2004, subsequently becoming Professor Emeritus. He was also appointed an Honorary Visiting Professor at the
University of Exeter,
University of Durham, and the
University of Worcester. That year, the
University of Winchester awarded him an
honorary Doctor of Letters. In 2006 Aston began writing a regular column, "Mick's Travels", for the bimonthly journal
British Archaeology, the publication of the
Council for British Archaeology. In 2007, Worcester University awarded Aston an honorary doctorate; that same year a number of his colleagues released a
festschrift in his honour entitled
People and Places: Essays in Honour of Michael Aston.
Final years: 2012–13 In February 2012, it was reported that Aston had left
Time Team. He explained his position to the
Western Daily Press, stating that the show's producers had made a number of changes to the series without consulting him, and that in the process
Time Team had been "
dumbed down", something he considered bad for archaeology. He was annoyed that a number of archaeologists – including surveyor
Stewart Ainsworth, small finds specialist
Helen Geake and illustrator
Victor Ambrus – had seen their roles diminished while a new co-presenter,
Mary-Ann Ochota, had been introduced, and that as a result the episodes now contained "a lot of faffing about." In an interview with the magazine
British Archaeology Aston said: "The time had come to leave. I never made any money out of it, but a lot of my soul went into it. I feel really, really angry about it." In July 2012, Aston received a lifetime achievement award at the British Archaeological Awards, with Bristol University's professor
Mark Horton praising him for making "the past accessible to all". In October, Channel 4 announced that the twentieth series of
Time Team would be its last as the show was being axed. In December, Aston signed a petition advocating his support for the revamp of the
Somerset Rural Life Museum in
Glastonbury, which was then seeking financial backers. On 24 June 2013, it was announced that Aston had died unexpectedly of a
brain haemorrhage at his home in Somerset. He had been due to receive an honorary doctorate from
University College Dublin that September. Ralph Lee, head of Channel 4's factual programming, announced that they had been "terribly saddened" by the news, and that they were planning a "tribute night" to Aston consisting of
Time Team episodes to be screened on
More4 on 13 July. ==Selected works==