My colleague Don Benson, who has died aged 83, belonged to the first generation of professional rescue archaeologists in the UK who in the 1960s and 70s responded to the increasing destruction of the historic environment by new developments.
Appointed in 1965 as the first field officer at the Oxford City and County Museum, he pioneered new techniques in the full excavation of the neolithic long barrow at Ascott-under-Wychwood in advance of road widening. The excavation remains a landmark in barrow studies, demonstrating their complexity and showing the barrow as part of a longer sequence including an extensive settlement. It was so well recorded that it was later possible to apply techniques such as extensive carbon dating and palaeopathology that were not readily available when the site was originally excavated.
