Professor Roger Leech

Archaeology
University of Southampton
Avenue Campus
Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BF

Position: Visiting Professor
Research group: Classical and Historical Archaeology

Research interests

Dr Roger H. Leech is a Visiting Professor and was formerly Head of Archaeology in the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, now part of English Heritage, before which he was Director of the Cumbria and Lancashire Archaeological Unit at Lancaster University.  Earlier he was Assistant Director of the Western Archaeological Trust in Bristol, concerned with rescue archaeology projects in Avon, Gloucestershire and Somerset.  His Ph.D. dissertation at Bristol University drew on some of this research and was on 'Romano-British Rural Settlement in South Somerset and North Dorset'.  He now teaches on archaeological field survey and on the historical archaeology of Britain and North America, 1500 to the present. His main research interests are now in the historical archaeology of the early modern city and of the Atlantic world in the seventeenth and subsequent centuries. He is currently completing for English Heritage a study of Bristol town houses, 1000 to c.1800, and is also undertaking a project looking at the colonial landscape of the eastern Caribbean, in which up to ten students from the department are likely to be participating in each year, funded to date by the British Academy and the Society of Antiquaries, and being carried out in partnership with colleagues from National Museums Liverpool and Bristol City Museum in England and  Mercer University, Mary Washington College and the University of Virginia (including the DACCS project) in the United States. This project forms part of the Department's Nevis Heritage Project.

He is a former President of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, was in 2002 co-organiser of the Society's conference at Southampton University  on CITIES IN THE WORLD 1500-2000 (see publications) and in 2005 was co-organiser of the Society's conference on THE COLONIAL LANDSCAPE OF THE CARIBBEAN, which was held on Nevis 26 June-1 July 2005.

Publications in Press are:

  • In press - 'Charlestown To Charleston - Urban And Plantation Connections In An Atlantic Setting' in ed. or eds. Jane Aldrich and David Shields, The  Material World of the Tidewater, Caribbean, and the Lowcountry (Charleston: College of Charleston forthcoming).
  • In press - 'Understanding Nevis- GPS and Archaeological Field Survey in a Post-Colonial Landscape', in ed. Basil Reid, Archaeology and Geoinformatics: Case Studies from the Caribbean, University of Alabama Press forthcoming.
  • Illustrations from the last, available for download are:


1. Nevis, divisions, as set out in the initial settlement of the island from c1628 onwards. Download

2. Mountravers: the plantation landscape, as recorded by GPS and field survey. Download

3. Upper Woodland, two plantation centres  of the 17th century abandoned by the early 19th century, as recorded by GPS and field survey. Download

4. Parris's Garden, an eighteenth-century villa above the town of Charlestown, as recorded by GPS and field survey. Download

Recent publications include:

  • 2007 "'In What Manner Did They Devide The Land'  The Early Colonial Estate Landscape Of Nevis And St Kitts", 191- 204 in eds. J. Finch and K. Giles, Estate Landscapes: Design, Improvement and Power in the Post-Medieval Landscape, Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 4 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer).
  • 2006    ed. (with Adrian Green), Cities in the World,  Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 3 (Leeds: Maneys).
  • 2006 'Portsmouth - A window on the world ?',  299-306  in eds Adrian Green and Roger H. Leech, Cities in the World,  Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 3 (Leeds: Maneys).
  • 2006 'Bristol: the Hearth Tax as a decodeable street directory', 83-94 in eds. P.S.Barnwell and Malcolm Airs, Houses and the Hearth Tax, the later Stuart house and society, CBA Research Report 150, York: Council for British Archaeology.
  • 2006 'Impermanent architecture in the English Colonies of the Eastern Caribbean: new contexts for architectural innovation in the early modern Atlantic world', Building Environments: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 10 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press), 153-167.
  • Leech, R.H. 2004
    The Atlantic world and industrialisation: Contexts for the structures of everyday life in early modern Bristol , in eds David Barker and David Cranstone, The Archaeology of Industrialisation, Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 1 (Leeds: Maneys), 157-164.
  • Leech, R.H. 2003
    The garden house: merchant culture and identity in the early modern city, in ed. Susan Lawrence, Archaeologies of the British, Explorations of identity in Great Britain and its colonies 1600-1945, One World Archaeology Series Volume 46, (London: Routledge), 76-86.
  • Leech, R.H. 2002
    Alleynedale Hall, Barbados - A Plantation House of the Seventeenth Century, Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 48, 123-41.
    The battlefield of the Dukla Pass - an archaeological perspective on the end of the Cold War in Europe, in eds. John Schofield, William Gray Johnson and Colleen Beck, Matériel Culture. The archaeology of twentieth-century conflict, One World Archaeology Series, Volume 44, (London: Routledge), 41-8.
  • Leech, R.H. 2001
    Issues for Historical Archaeology, Antiquity, 75, no. 290, 891-2.
  • Leech, R.H. 2000
    The symbolic hall: historical context and merchant culture in the early modern city, Vernacular Architecture, 30, 1-10.
    The St Michael's Hill precinct of the University of Bristol. The topography of medieval and early modern Bristol, part 2, Bristol Record Society, 52, 1-133.
    Row and terrace - urban housing in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English City, in (ed.) Geoffrey Eagan et al., The Archaeology of the British 1600-1800: Views from Two Worlds, London: Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology and Williamsburg: Society for Historical Archaeology.
  • Leech, R.H. 1999
    The processional city: some issues for historical archaeology, in (eds.) Tarlow, S. and West, S., The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of later historical Britain, 19-34, London: Routledge.
  • Leech, R.H. 1997
    Cluny et le développement urbain en Bourgogne du sud, in (eds.) Pierre Garrigou Grandchamp et al, La ville de Cluny et ses maisons, Paris: Picard, 76-87.
  • Leech, R.H. 1997
    The medieval defences of Bristol revisited. British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 19, 18-30.
  • Leech, R.H. 1996
    The Prospect from Rugman's Row: The Row House in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century London, Archaeological Journal, 153, 201-242/
  • View examples of my current research projects.
  • Email: rl2@soton.ac.uk
    Telephone: +44 (0)23 80594197
Teaching responsibilities for Professor Roger Leech
Module title Module code Discipline Role
The Familiar Past - Historical Archaeology in Britain And North America ARCH3021 Archaeology Course leader

Publications from e–Prints Soton

Green, Adrian and Leech, Roger (eds.) (2006) Cities In The World, 1500-2000: Proceedings of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Conference, 2002, Leeds, UK, Maney, 344pp. (Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 3)
Leech, Roger (2006) Portsmouth: a window on the world? In, Green, Adrian and Leech, Roger (eds.) Cities In The World, 1500-2000: Proceedings of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Conference, 2002. Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Conference Leeds, UK, Maney, 299-306.(Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 3).
Leech, Roger (2006) Summing up: cities in the world. In, Green, Adrian and Leech, Roger (eds.) Cities In The World, 1500-2000: Proceedings of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Conference, 2002. Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Conference Leeds, UK, Maney, 321-322.(Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 3).
Leech, R.H. (2006) Bristol: The Hearth Tax as a Decodable Street Directory. In, Barnwell, P.S. and Airs, Malcolm (eds.) Houses and the Hearth Tax: the later Stuart house and society. Council for British Archaeology, York, UK, 83-94.(CBA Research Report 150).
Leech, Roger (2005) Impermanent architecture in the English Colonies of the Eastern Caribbean: new contexts for architectural innovation in the early modern Atlantic world. In, Breisch, Kenneth A. and Hoagland, Alison K. (eds.) Building Environments: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture. Knoxville, USA, University of Tennessee Press, 153-167.
Leech, Roger H. (2004) The Atlantic World and Industrialization: Contexts for the Structures of Everyday Life in Early Modern Bristol. In, Barker, David and Cranstone, David (eds.) The Archaeology of Industrialization. Archaeology of Industrializtion Conference Leeds, UK, Maney, 155-164.(Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 2).
Leech, Roger H. Williams, B. (ed.) (2004) Owners and tenants – the historical documentation for Nos. 57–64 Redcliff Street and Nos. 88-91 St Thomas Street. Bristol and Avon Archaeology, 19, 3-12.
Leech, Roger (2003) The garden house: merchant culture and identity in the early modern city. In, Lawrence, Susan (ed.) Archaeologies of the British: Explorations of Identity in the United Kingdom and Its Colonies 1600-1945. London, UK; New York, US, Routledge, 76-86.(One World Archaeology, 46).
Leech, R. H. (2002) Alleynedale Hall, Barbados - a plantation house of the seventeenth century. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 48, 123-141.