TOP honours at the prestigious Current Archaeology Awards have been awarded for pioneering work that took place near Stonehenge.

Professor David Jacques at the University of Buckingham is the projector director at the unique prehistoric occupation site at Blick Mead, a position he has held since 2005.

Back then, initial excavations at the spring-side site spanned just one long weekend dig a year and were carried out on a shoestring budget with the help of the local Amesbury community and other volunteers.

Since then, the project has evolved into a multi-university research effort that uses the latest state-of-the-art technology to shed new light on the origins of the Stonehenge landscape and life in Mesolithic Britain.

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The initiative’s discoveries have revolutionised understanding of how the surrounding landscape was used in the centuries before Stonehenge was built, uncovering extensive evidence of hunter-gatherer communities coming together to create thousands of flint tools and to share elaborate feasts, while dating analysis has revealed Blick Mead to be the oldest and longest-used occupation site in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, spanning c.8000-3600 BC (a unique range for north-western Europe).

David was named 2023’s Archaeologist of the Year at the Current Archaeology Live! conference in London on Saturday, February 25, beating out fellow nominees Dr Gabor Thomas of the University of Reading and Lilian Ladle of Bournemouth University.

This year’s Current Archaeology Live! conference was the first time the event was held in-person since the introduction of Covid-19 restrictions, with over 400 people in attendance.

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This is not the first time that the Blick Mead team have received a Current Archaeology Award; they also won the prize for Research Project of the Year in 2018.

While the work has been very much a team effort, David’s colleagues see him as the lynchpin and catalyst behind the collective strength of the project, and he was nominated for the 2023 Archaeologist of the Year award as a representative of the investigations.

Accepting the award, David said: “I really can’t believe it – Gabor and Lilian are such obvious winners, so I am really taken aback. But this is for my friends, skilled archaeologists and really lovely people; all our volunteers; and the town of Amesbury, which is a very special community that has been so supportive of us.”