Jennifer Foster

Foster is a scholar of prehistoric and medieval archaeology, who specializes in the study of artifacts.[1] She formerly worked at the British Museum, and at the University of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.[1] She teaches at the University of Reading.[2] For the last 30 years she has taught archaeology to continuing education students at the university, with classes such as "The Ethics of Archaeology" and "The Legend and Archaeology of King Arthur."[1]

Foster is married to Martin Bell,[3] a professor of archaeological science at the University of Reading.[4]

In addition to a number of articles and chapters, Foster has written four monographs, including one on Iron Age and Roman boar figurines, one on the Lexden tumulus,[5] and one an introduction to European archaeology before the Roman conquest, based on the collection in the British Ashmolean Museum.[6]

Foster's first book, Bronze Boar Figurines in Iron Age and Roman Britain,[7] described and illustrated 22 examples of bronze boars from the Iron Age and Roman Britain, and described the animal's millennia-long role in European cultures;[8] a related article that came out the same year, "A Boar Figurine from Guilden Morden, Cambs.", detailed the Guilden Morden boar, a sixth- or seventh-century Anglo-Saxon copper alloy figure of a boar that may have once served as the crest of a helmet.[9] In a 1995 article she argued that Iron Age smiths creating high quality metalwork in Britain might have travelled around stopping at different sites, rather than having a fixed abode, and would produce multiple pieces at each site, as at Gussage All Saints, Dorset.[10]

• Bell, Martin & Walker, Michael J. C. (2005). Late Quaternary Environmental Change: Physical and Human Perspectives. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-13-033344-5.
• Raepsaet, Georges (1979). "Review: Bronze Boar Figurines in Iron Age and Roman Britain". L'Antiquité Classique. XLVIII (1): 435. JSTOR 41652617.

• Foster's bibliography at Archaeology Data Service