Neil Faulkner, who has died of lymphoma aged 64, was a pioneering archaeologist and historian whose approach to the discipline was influenced by his parallel activities as a political activist.
A self-described revolutionary socialist and author of some 20 books including such titles as A Radical History of the World and Creeping Fascism: What It Is & How to Fight It, Faulkner was, at various times, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and the Stop The War Coalition, for whom he wrote a pamphlet No Glory: the real history of the First World War.
In 2020 he was on the co-ordinating committee of Anti-Capitalist Resistance, which seeks “revolutionary transformation to meet the compound crisis of ecological disaster, economic collapse, social decay, grotesque inequality, mass impoverishment, growing militarisation, and creeping authoritarianism”. In addition he was instrumental in setting up the Brick Lane Debates, whose aim is “to promote participatory political education, empowerment around left wing politics”, and the Left Book Club.
Neil Faulkner
Yet Faulkner belied the humourless Marxist stereotype. Good-looking, passionate and articulate, as an archaeologist he worked freelance and helped keep his head above water by working as a lecturer and tour guide and making occasional appearances on television in series such as Channel 4’s Time Team, and on the BBC’s Timewatch.
His approach to history was shaped by his politics
The man who thrilled Left-wing audiences in Brick Lane with demands for an end to “austerity economics” and a call to “physically” take the wealth from the banks and international financiers, was equally capable, though he never hid his politics, of charming the denizens of Nadfas (The National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, now the Arts Society) or well-heeled passengers on specialist historical tours.
It was surprising to some that he was also founder editor of Military History Monthly (now Military History Matters – or MHM), a lively magazine covering a field of interest which most associate with people whose politics tend towards the conservative end of the spectrum.
In this role Faulkner welcomed contributions from people of many different political persuasions. When in 2014 MHM co-organised a debate at the Royal United Services Institute on the subject of whether or not Britain was right to go to war in 1914, on the pro side were the historian Nigel Jones and the Conservative politician and former Army officer Patrick Mercer, with Faulkner (who regarded the First World War as “a rich man’s war in which 15 million poor men died”) and Jan Woolf putting the case against.
“We lost by about three to one,” he recalled, “but then the Royal United Services Institute is about as central to British imperialism as you can possibly imagine.”
Faulkner discovered of one of the desert camps Lawrence used before launching attacks on the Hijaz railway line
Originally trained as a Romanist (he regarded the Roman Empire as a case of “robbery with violence”), Faulkner was instrumental in establishing two major archaeological projects: the Great Arab Revolt Project, a ten-year field project looking at the military campaigns of Lawrence of Arabia in southern Jordan, and the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project (Sharp) centred on a parish in north-west Norfolk.
The project Faulkner founded in Norfolk in 1996 is still going strong
Founded in 1996 and still continuing, Sharp has focused on a variety of sites, including a large early Christian Anglo-Saxon cemetery and an associated settlement and a unique area consisting of several kilns for malting barley (used to make beer) on an industrial scale. Other sites have featured Iron Age, Roman, medieval and modern remains – and even a First World War aerodrome.
The project was billed by Faulkner as an exercise in “democratic archaeology” in which traditional hierarchies would be rejected and fieldwork “rooted in the community”. Whether practice conformed entirely to theory was a bit of a moot point (Faulkner was very much a hands-on leader), but Sharp is now one of the largest and most successful training digs in the UK.
Likewise the Great Arab Revolt Project, which he co-directed with Professor Nick Saunders of Bristol University, yielded both fascinating discoveries and edifying political lessons.
Faulkner in the Jordanian desert holding British Army ration tins found at one of TE Lawrence's camps
The discovery of one of the desert camps TE Lawrence used before launching attacks on the Hijaz railway line, complete with spent cartridges and rum bottles discarded by British troops, and the excavation of the site of a deadly attack on a Turkish supply train, served to confirm Lawrence’s often criticised account of his desert exploits in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Faulkner clearly admired Lawrence as a brilliant military commander, but observed that he had become a “metaphor for the imperialism, violence and betrayals that tore the region apart a century ago and has left it divided into warring fragments.”
Neil Faulkner
Neil Faulkner was born on January 22 1958, brought up in the Weald of Kent and educated at the Skinners’ School in Tunbridge Wells and at King’s College, Cambridge, where he read Social and Political Sciences.
He worked as a schoolteacher before deciding to train as an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.
Faulkner regarded the Roman Empire as a case of 'robbery with violence'
His other books include The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain; Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt Against Rome ; Rome: Empire of the Eagles; Digging Sedgeford: A People’s Archaeology; Lawrence of Arabia’s War, A People’s History of the Russian Revolution and his last book Empire and Jihad.
While most of his books were informed by his politics, he was equally capable of lighter, more amusing fare. In A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics, published in 2012 to coincide with the London Olympics, he provided an entertaining and gossipy guide to the original Games as they were held in the 4th century BC.
This included such fascinating details as the fact that the Olympic village had hundreds of prostitutes catering to every taste and price range; that men were not allowed to take their wives but could take their unmarried daughters, and that the Games typically attracted crowds of up to 100,000 spectators.
Faulkner, observed one reviewer, “makes the whole experience sound like an ancient version of Woodstock, with a ‘combination of baking summer heat, a lack of sanitation, rotting garbage and night-time racket’.”
Faulkner lived in St Albans with his partner Lucy, who survives him with their three children, Tiggy, Rowena, and Finnian.
Neil Faulkner, born January 22 1958, died February 4 2022