Richard John Copland Atkinson (1920–1994) was a British prehistorian and archaeologist. 1920 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ...

He was born in Dorset and went to Sherbourne School and then Magdalen College, Oxford, reading PPE. During the Second World War his Quaker beliefs meant that he served in non-combatant roles in 1944 he became Assistant Keeper of Arcaheology at the Ashmolean Museum. Dorset (pronounced Dorsit, sometimes in the past called Dorsetshire) is a county in the southwest of England, on the English Channel coast. ... Magdalen College (pronounced ) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... PPE stands for PCBoard Programming Executable, a door specification for the PCBoard BBS software. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, or Friends, is a religious community founded in England in the 17th century. ... The Ashmolean Museum (in full the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology) in Oxford, England is the worlds first university museum. ...

He investigated sites including Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow and Wayland's Smithy and was a friend and collaborator of Stuart Piggott. His Silbury work was part of an aborted BBC documentary series on the monument. In 1949 he was made a lecturer at Edinburgh University and in 1958 moved to Cardiff to become its first professor of archeology. He remained at the University of Wales until he retired in 1983. He received the CBE in 1979 and work continued long after his death in writing up his prolific excavations. Stonehenge Stonehenge is a Neolithic and Bronze Age monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Salisbury. ... Silbury Hill, part of the complex of Neolithic monuments around Avebury in Wiltshire (which includes the West Kennet Long Barrow), is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the worlds largest. ... The West Kennet Long Barrow is a Neolithic tomb, situated on a prominent chalk ridge, near Silbury Hill, one-and-a-half miles south of Avebury in Wiltshire. ... Waylands Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow and chamber tomb site located near the Uffington White Horse and Uffington Castle in the English county of Oxfordshire. ... Stuart Ernest Piggott (28 May 1910–23 September 1996) CBE, was a British archaeologist most well known for his work on prehistoric Wessex. ... The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national publicly funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. ... The University of Edinburgh was founded in 1583 as a renowned centre for teaching in Edinburgh, Scotland. ... Cardiff (Welsh: Caerdydd) is the capital and largest city of Wales. ... The University of Wales, or Prifysgol Cymru in Welsh, is a federal university founded in 1893. ... CBE can stand for: Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a grade in the Order of the British Empire Council of Biology Editors, a former name of the Council of Science Editors, who publish the CBE style guide Calgary Board of Education, a formation of multiple Employees to...

Atkinson was famous for his practical contributions to archaeological technique and his pragmatic solutions to on-site problems which were listed in the handbook he wrote called Field Archaeology.