Sara Champion
Sara Champion was a British archaeologist with an interest in the European Iron Age and the role and visibility of women working in archaeology. She was editor of PAST, the newsletter of The Prehistoric Society from 1997 until her death in 2000. The Prehistoric Society hosts an annual Sara Champion Memorial Lecture.
Early life and education
Champion was born Sara Hermon, the second of four children. The family lived in and Tanzania for six years of her childhood. Champion later attended Benenden School. After Benenden, Champion attended the University of Edinburgh, where she studied for her first degree and a master's degree in archaeology under Stuart Piggott and Charles Thomas. In 1968 Champion moved to St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she studied for a D.Phil. under the supervision of Christopher Hawkes concentrating on the Early European Iron Age.Academic and Archaeological work
Sara Champion spent time at the University of Galway in Ireland, before moving to the University of Southampton in 1972, where she undertook a two-year fellowship in archaeology. She carried out excavations at sites like Dragonby, and in Hampshire an important Iron Age site near Andover. Sara was then made a Hartley Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, later becoming a Research Fellow in that department. She also lectured archaeology at the University of Southampton, as well as Adult and Continuing Education courses. In addition to research and teaching, Sara undertook other roles being a member of the National Trust Archaeology Panel, a chief examiner of the NEAB Archaeology A-level Board, and a field monument warden in West Hampshire and Dorset for English Heritage, overseeing the upkeep and preservation of scheduled monuments. Champion understood the importance of media, electronic publications and bibliographical searches very early, as well as the overall potential of the internet for archaeology and she lectured and wrote articles on the application of internet resources in the teaching of archaeology, and electronic archaeology. She also spoke at several events on this topic including various IFA conferences. Another area of research and interest was role the visibility of women in archaeology.Sara Champion was a published author with publications on a range of topics from the Iron Age, to women in archaeology and Irish folklore. She was the editor for the Prehistoric Society's newsletter PAST.
Six years after Champion's death a seminar room in the Crawford Building, the new building for the archaeology department at the University of Southampton, was named in her honour.
Personal life
Champion met Timothy Champion while studying at Oxford and they were married in 1970 at St Paul's Church in Knightsbridge. In 1972 the Champions moved to Southampton, where their two sons, Edward and William, were born, in the mid-1970s, and 1978 respectively.Champion's interests outside archaeology included music and she was a long-term member of the Southampton Philharmonic Choir.
Champion died of cancer in May 2000. The band Coldplay, of which her son Will is a member, dedicated their debut album Parachutes to her on its release in July 2000.
Selected publications
- 1970 "The Hillforts of the Cotteswold Scarp, with Special Reference to Recent Excavations", Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club 36, 18-23
- 1971 "Excavations at Leckhampton Hill; 1969–70 Interim Report", Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 90, 5-21
- 1973 Andover – The Archaeological Implications of Development Andover and District Excavation Committee
- 1976 "Leckhampton Hill, Gloucestershire – 1925 and 1970", in Hillforts: Later Prehistoric Earthworks in Britain and Ireland, ed. D. W. Harding, 177-191
- 1980 A Dictionary of Terms and Techniques in Archaeology. Oxford: Phaidon Press Ltd
- 1980 "Dendrochronology", Nature 284, 663–664
- 1995 "Archaeology and the internet", Field Archaeologist 24, 18–19
- 1997 "Special Review Section. Electronic Archaeology", Antiquity 71, co-authored with Christopher Chippindale
- 1998 "Women in British Archaeology. Visible and Invisible," in Excavating Women. A History of Women in European Archaeology, Andreu, M. Diaz and Sørensen, M.-L.S., London, 175–197.
Sara Champion Memorial Lectures
The 2020–2021 lecture numbering system seems to have missed one out: the 20th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture.
| Lecture | Date | Title | Lecturer | Reference |
| 1st Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 24 October 2001 | "A new cart/chariot burial from Wetwang, East Yorkshire" | J D Hill | |
| 2nd Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 30 October 2002 | "The development of Bronze Age society in north Munster" | Carleton Jones | |
| 3rd Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 15 October 2003 | "Social change in later prehistory: evidence from the northern roundhouse" | Rachel Pope | |
| 4th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 27 October 2004 | "The Irish Sea connection: exploring the origins of monumentality in western Britain" | Vicki Cummings | |
| 5th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 26 October 2005 | "Seeing red: art, artefacts and colour in the Iron Age of Britain and Ireland" | Melanie Giles | |
| 6th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | October 2006 | |||
| 7th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 24 October 2007 | "A crystal world from weeping stone: considering the relationships between Neolithic cave art and monument construction on Mendip" | Jodie Lewis | |
| 8th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | October 2008 | |||
| 9th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | October 2009 | |||
| 10th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 19 October 2011 | "Creative destruction: middens at the end of the Bronze Age" | Kate Waddington | |
| 11th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 17 October 2012 | "Tangled histories: British prehistorians, research practice and disciplinary change, 1975–2010" | Anwen Cooper | |
| 12th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 16 October 2013 | "Making pots matter: social practice and early first millennium BC ceramics in East Anglia" | Matt Brudenell | |
| 13th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 22 October 2014 | "'The personality of Britain' reconsidered: evaluating the relationship between the social and physical geographies of Bronze Age Britain " | Neil Wilkin | |
| 14th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 28 October 2015 | "The evolution of religious branding in later prehistoric Europe: the case of Urnfield and Hallstatt bird imagery" | Sebastian Becker | |
| 15th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 26 October 2016 | "Antlerworking practices of the British Mesolithic: materials, identities and technologies within the landscape" | Ben Elliott | |
| 16th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 25 October 2017 | "Making and breaking the British Iron Age: a holistic approach to craft and material culture" | Julia Farley | |
| 17th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 31 October 2018 | "Though they but little... The Bronze Age funerary cups of Britain" | Claire Copper | |
| 18th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 30 October 2019 | "Fragments of the Bronze Age. Destruction, deposition and personhood" | Matthew G. Knight | |
| 19th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 21 October 2020 | "Becoming metallic: the emergence of metals in Britain and Ireland" | Rachel Crellin | |
| 20th Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | ||||
| 21st Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 20 October 2021 | "Genetic change and relatedness in Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain" | Tom Booth | |
| 22nd Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 19 October 2022 | "'I see the hands of the generations' - perceiving the past through later prehistoric artefacts" | Sophia Adams | |
| 23rd Sara Champion Memorial Lecture | 16 October 2024 | Into the woods: new methods for studying Palaeolithic organic technologies | Annemieke Mills |