I am very sad to report that Duncan Black died on 26th December 2008. His death is a huge loss to this project.
Duncan first worked with the project as part of a team from Strode College, Somerset,
participating in the formative shovel pitting campaign on Sigwells which became the
springboard for the successful funding application to the Leverhulme Trust. During
his early work with the project he was part of the test pit digging team but it was
in his role as the project’s surveyor that he had special importance in the field.
In addition to the local volunteers, several generations of under-
Duncan introduced magnetic susceptibility to the project in 2003, and assumed full responsibility for processing of many hundreds of samples. He moved away from the typical mapping of horizontal distributions to recording values in the vertical plane, from samples retrieved from the walls of test pits and from excavation sections. The full value of this work has yet to be realised as it was in progress at the time of his death. However, it was already providing important and sometimes surprising insights into the magnetometer survey results. Duncan’s other work in progress was the identification of metals and post mediaeval material from the programme of shovel pitting.
Duncan was an immensely popular figure amongst the regular volunteers and remains
imprinted on the minds of all the students who participated in and remain in contact
with the project. He was often the butt of jokes about his encyclopaedic knowledge
of telegraph poles (to those who know, a lose term which he did not use himself!)
and World War Two installations -
Duncan had many facets to a life which he lived to the full. In his his youth he was a cyclist who could pedal from Southampton to Faslane. In recent years he preferred the comfort of cruise liners and aircraft. Sea and air combined in his work at the Yeovilton museum and periodically it would call on his special expertise and whisk him away in a jet to distant parts of Britain. He was also a long term member and officer of the Yeovil Archaeological and Historical Society.
The project offers its very sincere condolences to all of Duncan’s friends and he would have considered it remiss of me not to make particular mention of a very special feline, Norman, who rode shotgun.
Richard Tabor
Updated 1st July 2009
“I have been in contact with Duncan since my wonderful month with you the summer
before last. He always attached a nice note to the newsletter. We had been e-
It is just awful news, he was such a fascinating guy with the most wonderfully
dry sense of humour, and the best sport when being teased. When I first arrived he
took Emma and I on a personal tour of the area (in the backseat of course,) driving
us to endless empty fields to point out random bumps we could barely make out at
all. The fact that the two of us had begun to fall asleep between stops did not deter
him at all.
He was a wonderful man, I was just so sad to hear the news.”
Hannah Biesterfeld
“I was able to meet up with Duncan when I was excavating in Ilchester and I have fond memories of the numerous slideshows he held with me showing his latest archaeological cruises! It is a very great loss.”
Bex Riley
If volunteers would like to add their own messages or memories -