Christopher Hawkes

For other people named Christopher Hawkes, see Christopher Hawkes (disambiguation).

Christopher Hawkes
Born
Charles Francis Christopher Hawkes

(1905-06-05)5 June 1905
Died29 March 1992(1992-03-29) (aged 86)
OccupationArchaeologist
Spouses
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    (m. 1933; div. 1953)​
  • ​
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    (m. 1959)​
Academic work
Doctoral studentsTania Dickinson[1]
Edward James (historian)[2]

Charles Francis Christopher Hawkes, FBA, FSA (5 June 1905 – 29 March 1992) was an English archaeologist specialising in European prehistory. He was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1946 to 1972.

He was educated at Sandroyd School, Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he obtained first class honours in classics. He began archaeological work at the British Museum, where he was Assistant Keeper in Pre-Historic and Romano-British Antiquities from 1928. In May 1946, Dr Hugh Fawcett took Hawkes some pieces from the newly discovered Mildenhall Treasure. It was Hawkes who identified them as late Roman silver.[3] He was appointed Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford later in 1946. He was a Fellow of Keble College. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries in 1981,[4] now held by the Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.[5]

In 1933 he was married to Jacquetta Hopkins, with whom he co-authored Prehistoric Britain (1937); they divorced in 1953. He married Sonia Chadwick, also an archaeologist, in 1959.[6] They jointly edited Greeks, Celts and Romans: studies in venture and resistance, 1973.

He was survived by his wife Sonia and son, Nicholas.

  1. ^ Dickinson, Tania (1976). The Anglo-Saxon burial sites of the upper Thames region, and their bearing on the history of Wessex, circa AD 400-700 (PhD). University of Oxford. p. xv. Archived from the original on 5 February 2023. Retrieved 5 February 2023. Open access icon
  2. ^ James, Edward (1975). South-West Gaul from the fifth to the eighth century: the contribution of archaeology (PhD). University of Oxford.
  3. ^ Hobbs, Richard, "The Secret History of the Mildenhall Treasure", The Antiquaries Journal, Vol. 88, 2008, pp. 376 - 420
  4. ^ Harding (1992)
  5. ^ "Coin Details 131971". hcr.ashmus.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2 February 2024. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
  6. ^ Collectanea antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes was published in 2007