My older brother, Hal Dalwood, who has died of cancer aged 58, was an archaeologist with a passion for communicating his subject to as many people as possible, be they other archaeologists, students, members of the public, or family members old and young.
Son of Peter, an antiquarian bookseller, and Mary, Hal was born in Bristol. Our family moved to Penzance, Cornwall, in 1969. Interested in archaeology from childhood, Hal studied at Southampton University, under Professor Colin Renfrew, in the 1970s. He spent a year in Sudan teaching English before joining the archaeological digging circuit, working on excavations around Britain, at Hazleton North, Beckford, Amersham, Great Missenden, St Albans and Shetland.
In the mid-1980s he spent several years working for Buckinghamshire County Museum, in Aylesbury, digging and writing up excavations. During this time he was a member of CND as well as of Archaeologists for Peace. In 1988, he moved to Worcester to collaborate on a major urban excavation within the medieval and Roman town and his report on it was a highly regarded monograph.
Hal continued to work for Worcestershire Historic Environment and Archaeology Service, overseeing archeological projects in the Midlands, until taking voluntary redundancy in 2013. His last major project was the excavation of the site in Worcester city centre where the Hive library and archive and archaeology centre was due to be built, and where he revealed a previously unknown Roman suburb.
Hal was a brilliant and inspiring team leader and worker, and a great believer in developing younger archaeologists. He was completely engaged in the world of professional archaeology: teaching, attending conferences and writing popular and academic publications, the last of which, on Anglo-Saxon towns, will be published in 2016. He was a stalwart supporter of what has become the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), from its origin in 1982.
Hal was a loving, engaging, fun person, and a devoted uncle; he had an encyclopedic mind for history and the ancient world, but was equally interested in politics and current affairs. He had a strong sense of social justice, and was an active member and steward of his union, Unison.
In 1993 he married Rachel Edwards, also an archaeologist; they worked together as colleagues in Worcester for many years. She survives him, along with Mary and me.
