Bob Clarke, born in Scarborough in 1964 is an English archaeologist[1] and historian.
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Upon leaving school Clarke joined the Royal Air Force in 1981 at the height of the Cold War. He served at RAF Leeming, Lyneham, Ascension Island and St Athan during a nine year term. During that time he worked on Jet Provost, Lockheed Hercules and Panavia Tornado aircraft. From 1990 he worked across Europe as a structural engineer on Airbus A300-600 series and Boeing 747's. Clarke also spent a year at the Dutch aeromanufacturer Fokker as a production engineer on the Fokker F100 medium range airliner. From 1996 until May 2008 Clarke was located at Boscombe Down lecturing Aircraft Structures, Systems and Theory of Flight at FES Training Centre. He is now part of the Curriculum Development team for Ascent Flight Training Ltd, part of the VT Group.
After leaving the RAF he travelled around Europe with his wife Sarah, visiting cities and sites that had lain behind the 'Iron Curtain'. This formed the background to his first major book, Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War, published by Tempus in 2005. Still in print, the book is in its third impression. Following this Clarke researched the Berlin Airlift, culminating in the publication of Ten Tons for Tempelhof: The Berlin Airlift published in May 2007. In this the memories of many veterans were published for the first time along with pictures from private collections. In February 2008 The Archaeology of Airfields was published by the recently formed The History Press (formally Tempus Publishing). Airfields is the first publication to bring together all periods of military aviation, including the Cold War and discuss them utilising a framework of landscape archaeology. In December 2008 The Jet Provost: A Little Plane With a Big History was released by Amberley Publishing, followed in October 2009 by The Illustrated Guide to Armageddon, and in October 2010 by Remember Scarborough again through Amberley. A table top book on the Prehistoric archaeology of Wiltshire, in collaboration with Wiltshire Heritage, is due in 2011. Aside to the books Clarke has published papers in a number of academic journals on archaeological themes. Subjects range Cold War nuclear bunkers in Wiltshire, Bronze Age metalwork, Roman building techniques, earthworks near Stonehenge and Saxon executions. Clarke has held the position of Honorary Review Editor for the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, the Wiltshire County journal, since 2006.
Clarke is a visiting tutor in archaeology at the University of Bath, he was educated in archaeology under professor Mick Aston and Julian Richards. Followed by a period at Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford where he obtained his honours degree in post-compulsory education. Clarke held the post of QinetiQ Archaeologist at Boscombe Down between 1996-2008. His research areas cover a number of periods including Prehistoric and Roman Wiltshire and British Military Architecture of the 20th Century (airfields and nuclear), an area where he is considered an authority. Clarke is currently reading archaeology at the University of Exeter studying Home Defence Region 7, a Cold War administrative areas in the South-West of the United Kingdom. He is credited with the discovery of Broad Town Man, a Saxon execution burial from North Wiltshire.