As an archaeologist, material culture specialist and expert on Roman Britain, Ralph Jackson, who has died from cancer aged 73, created an impressive body of work during nearly four decades as a curator at the British Museum.
He was a leading expert in the field of Greco-Roman medicine, and one of very few scholars who specialised in its material aspects, specifically surgical instruments and paraphernalia recovered in excavation. His 1988 book Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire has sold thousands of copies across the English-speaking world.
The survival of surgical instruments from the Roman empire – many of which are almost identical to those used by modern surgeons today – is a matter of luck and chance. Ralph’s expertise was called upon when a set of around 150 metal instruments, mostly scalpels, forceps, hooks and probes, was found in the mid-1990s during the excavation of a Roman town house at Rimini in Italy, known as the Surgeon’s House.
The set only survived because of a conflagration at the house, possibly during a raid by a Germanic tribe in the third century AD. It is not known what happened to the resident doctor – we can imagine he fled in fear of his life – but his medical instrument set was preserved in the ashes of his probable consulting room
. Ralph also worked on another important set of instruments that appeared on the antiquities market in the early 90s, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Reputed to come from Asia Minor or Syria, the set numbered 37 pieces, including many specialised medical tools as well as essential instruments of surgery and pharmaceutical equipment.
His great achievement was to combine the archaeological evidence with the writings of Celsus, Galen and other luminaries of ancient medicine, and also with depictions of surgery, for instance a Pompeiian fresco panel that shows a doctor using forceps to treat the wounded leg of Aeneas. With this pioneering approach of comparing different types of evidence, he was able to identify the purpose each metal object served, and also distinguish between surgical instruments and craft tools or implements for grooming.
I can testify that Ralph’s numerous spellbinding talks on surgical procedures in the Roman world were not for the squeamish, especially when he described removing cataracts with special needles.
He was born in Bedford, but the family soon moved to a farm on the South Downs and then to Higham’s Park in north-east London, where his father, Brian, became a policemen and his mother, Jackie (nee Barnes), an accountant. Ralph shared the house with four siblings and dozens of foster children over the years.
He went to Leyton county high school for boys and in his late teens became passionate about archaeology, travelling around the country to dig on second world war bomb sites before embarking on an archaeology degree at Cardiff University.
After graduation his tutor, Bill Manning, encouraged him to apply for a junior curatorship at the British Museum, where he began his career in 1977, leaving 39 years later as a senior curator of the Romano-British collections. He was subsequently awarded a DLitt by Cardiff for his body of published work.
Ralph never lost his interest in field archaeology, co-directing during the 80s a huge archaeological fieldwork project at Stonea, Cambridgeshire. There they excavated a building dated to the second century AD that had the appearance of “display architecture”; this and other evidence suggested that the settlement was an administrative and market centre for an area of the Fenlands used to produce agricultural goods under the control of the Roman “state”. The resulting publication, of which Ralph was the principal author, appeared in 1996.
He also co-directed excavations at Ashwell, Hertfordshire, in the 2000s, following the discovery in 2002 of a highly unusual treasure of silver votive plaques and a statue of a new Roman deity named Senuna, probably the goddess of a nearby spring. The research was published in 2018, now the standard reference for these attractive objects used by cult devotees to gain divine favour.
He also researched and identified hundreds of “cosmetic grinders” used to pound coloured minerals for beautification − makeup has a long history. His book Cosmetic Sets of Late Iron and Roman Britain was published in 2010.
A hugely popular and respected member of British Museum staff, Ralph was generous with his time and vast knowledge, as well as being witty, charming and occasionally mischievous.
His collegiate approach was vital to the success of the permanent displays in the Weston Gallery of Roman Britain, which opened in 1997 and has remained largely unchanged since – hundreds of thousands of people, including numerous school groups, have enjoyed the exhibits that he played a key part in shaping.
One of my most rewarding experiences was co-writing with him the book Roman Britain: Life at the Edge of Empire (2010) based around these Romano-British displays.
Equally popular was the special exhibition Gladiators and Caesars that he co-curated in the early 2000s, editing the accompanying book.
Ralph loved the home in rural Norfolk he shared with Sylvia Took, his partner of more than 30 years, whom he married in July this year, managing the nearby wood when he was not squirreled away in the writer’s hut at its heart.
A keen swimmer, he regularly took a dip in the North Sea at Sheringham and Cley, sometimes accompanied by a seal. He had a vast collection of church music on vinyl and was fond of Palestrina.
He had four children with his first wife, Liz, whom he married in 1974; the marriage ended in divorce. After meeting Sylvia, he took on the father figure role to her four children; they shared 22 grandchildren. He is survived by Sylvia and his children.
• Ralph Jackson, archaeologist and curator, born 9 December 1950; died 16 September 2024
