Julian D. Richards

Julian Daryl Richards is a British archaeologist and academic. He works at the University of York where he is Professor of Archaeology, director of its Centre for Digital Heritage, and director of the Archaeology Data Service (ADS). He is also co-director of the academic journal Internet Archaeology, and contributed to the founding of The White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities. His work focuses on the archaeological applications of information technology. He has participated in excavations at Cottam, Cowlam, Burdale, Wharram Percy, and Heath Wood barrow cemetery.

Career
Richards studied archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, after switching from history. He began his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at North Staffordshire Polytechnic in 1980, researching burial rituals among pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons. His doctoral thesis was titled "An investigation of the significance of form and decoration in Early Anglo-Saxon funerary urns" and was completed in 1985.

In the 1970s or 1980s Richards was a volunteer in the excavations of Viking Age settlements around the Coppergate Shopping Centre in York. He then spent time at the University of Leeds, before returning to York in 1986 to lecture about Anglo-Saxon and Viking archaeology at the University of York.

Richards lectured at the University of York, concentrating on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age archaeology, particularly mortuary behaviour and settlement evolution, in England. In that capacity he published Viking Age England in 1991, and has worked at Cottam, Cowlam, Burdale, Wharram Percy, and Heath Wood barrow cemetery. , he is re-examining a winter camp used by the Great Viking Army at Torksey, Lincolnshire, stretching over 136 acres.

Another concentration of Richards is the intersection of archaeology and technology. In 1985 he co-edited a textbook on archaeological computing, Current Issues in Archaeological Computing, a focus of subsequent books and papers. He is the director of the Archaeology Data Service, a digital archive of archaeological research, and the co-director of Internet Archaeology, an electronic peer-reviewed journal. He is also the director the Centre for Digital Heritage at the University of York. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1991 and is a Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (MCIfA).

Richards was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to heritage and digital archiving.