Joan Radcliffe Clarke, the second daughter of the former Bishop of Oxford, Kenneth Kirk, has died at the age of 83.

Born Joan Radcliffe Kirk on February 11, 1924, her father, Dr Kirk, was the Bishop of Oxford from 1937 to 1954.

Mrs Clarke was brought up in Oxford, living first in Norham Road, then in Christ Church and then in Boars Hill.

At Oxford University, she did a two-year degree in classics and was involved in excavations carried out by the University Archaeological Society.

Following university, she served in the WRNS at Bletchley Park, leaving in 1946 to do a Social Services Diploma at Oxford.

The diploma was never completed since in 1947 she was recruited as an assistant keeper in the Department of Antiquities of the Ashmolean Museum.

Her first substantial publication, in 1949, was of surface finds from the Romano-Celtic temple site at Woodeaton, near Oxford.

Mrs Clarke was elected a Fellow of the society on January 10, 1952, when still only in her late 20s.

In 1956 she married David Tyrwhitt-Drake Clarke, then Keeper of Antiquities at Leicester Museum.

They moved to Colchester in 1963 when he became curator of the Colchester and Essex Museum.

This meant leaving the Ashmolean and she gave up full-time employment in order to focus on her family. The couple went on to have four children.

She retained a keen interest in archaeology and contributed to educational works, including a book she wrote with her husband on Camulodunum, the Roman town that was to become Colchester, Following her husband's retirement from the Colchester museum in 1988, they moved back to Oxfordshire and settled in Combe near Woodstock in 1990.

For the rest of her life, she was involved with the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society.

She died on October 13.