About
R. Alan Williams graduated with a PhD in Archaeology in 2018 from the University of Liverpool based on archaeometallurgical and geoarchaeological studies of the Great Orme Bronze Age copper mine. This was followed by a post doc on the Leverhulme-funded Project Ancient Tin at Durham and Liverpool Universities. He originally graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree in Mining Geology, from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, University of London in 1974 where he was awarded the Clement Le Neve Foster Prize. After working in metal mining and exploration (Cornish tin mining and Canadian gold exploration) he had a long research career with the international glass company, Pilkington (now NSG). Until 2012 he was chief geologist at the Pilkington European research centre responsible for global sourcing of glass-making raw materials in over 20 countries. Since 2012 he has been applying his expertise in geochemistry, ore geology, mineralogy and pyrotechnology to outstanding archaeological challenges in the field of prehistoric metal mining and smelting. He had previously published two books and several articles on historic metal mining. In his PhD thesis he showed that the Great Orme mine in North Wales was a major copper producer in the Bronze Age and that its metal was involved in long-distance trade/exchange networks reaching from Brittany to Norway. The recent Bronze Age tin project has linked tin ingots in several Mediterranean shipwrecks to the abundant alluvial tin deposits of southwest England using trace elements combined with lead and tin isotopes of tin ores and tin artefacts. This has established Cornwall and Devon as a major source of that scarce metal to the European and Mediterranean Bronze Age trade networks. This research is continuing with excavations on St Michael's Mount in Cornwall which are producing evidence of the island being a potential Bronze Age tin trading centre, possibly the Ictis of classical texts.