Winner of the 2025 President's Lifetime Achievement Award
Professor Emeritus, University of Reading
Richard John Bradley is a British archaeologist and academic. He specialises in the study of European prehistory, and in particular Prehistoric Britain. From 1987 to 2013, he was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading; he is now emeritus professor. He is also the author of numerous books on the subject of archaeology and prehistory. British Archaeology magazine commented that Bradley was one of the best respected archaeologists in the field. On 13 January 1977, Bradley was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA). In 1995, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2006, Bradley was awarded the Grahame Clark Medal by the British Academy.
His fieldwork has centred on prehistoric settlements, landscapes and monuments in England, Scotland, Spain and Scandinavia. These include studies of Cranborne Chase, the Neolithic axe quarries of Great Langdale (Cumbria), the stone circles of north-east Scotland, the Clava Cairns of northern Scotland, the megalithic art of Orkney, the prehistoric land boundaries of Salisbury Plain, and the Copper Age cave sanctuary of El Pedroso (northern Spain). He has conducted other field investigations of megalithic tombs in the west of Sweden, and a study of the siting of Bronze Age metalwork hoards in southern England, and has also investigated prehistoric rock art in Britain, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Norway.
Recent projects include a book on approaches to studying prehistoric art, another on ritual and domestic life in prehistoric Europe, and accounts of both the prehistory of Britain and Ireland and the role of circular architecture in the ancient world. Field projects published in the last three years include an investigation of henge monuments in Aberdeenshire and Caithness, excavation around prehistoric rock carvings on the National Trust of Scotland’s Ben Lawers estate, and a study of the Bronze Age ship settings on the Baltic island of Gotland. Together with three colleagues he is writing a new account of the Continental background to British and Irish Prehistory. The latter project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and conducted jointly with Leicester University.
His books include The Social Foundations of Prehistoric Britain (1984), Passage of Arms: An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive Deposits (1990), Interpreting the Axe Trade: Production and Exchange in Neolithic Britain (1993), The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe (1998), An Archaeology of Natural Places (2000), The Past in Prehistoric Societies (2002), Ritual and Domestic Life in Prehistoric Europe (2005), The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland(2007) and The Idea of Order: The Circular Archetype in Prehistoric Europe (2012)