DR PETER MARSDEN is a professional archaeologist who has excavated numerous Roman, medieval and later sites. He was commissioned to record the Bronze Age (c.1550 BC) boat at Dover, and has excavated the oldest seagoing sailing ship found in northern Europe (of c.150 AD), as well as other Roman and medieval shipwrecks in the River Thames. He is a founder of the Council for Nautical Archaeology that successfully campaigned for a law to protect historic shipwrecks (Protection of Wrecks Act 1973), and in 1986 created the Shipwreck Museum at Hastings in East Sussex. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. While doing all of this he was commissioned by the Mary Rose Trust to compile two of the five major academic volumes about Mary Rose.
