HUMPHREY Case, a leading archaeologist who excavated sites in Britain dating from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age, and a former keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, died in June aged 91.

Born at Frome in 1918 into a family from the leather trade, he was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge.

He served in the Somerset Light Infantry during the Second World War and in 1947 began studying at the Institute of Archaeology in London.

In 1949 he was appointed assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Museum, a centre for regional archaeological fieldwork at the time, and spent his days redisplaying and cataloguing the collections.

He also undertook and published a wide series of excavations on sites dating from the Mesolithic period to the Iron Age, including investigating sites in France and Ireland.

His most significant work was Settlement Patterns in the Oxford Regions which he co-wrote in 1982.

Mr Case co-wrote Early Metallurgy of Copper in Ireland and Britain and worked on a project about the copper age in Ireland which earned him election as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

He also served on the council of the Prehistoric Society, served on he Bronze Age Forum and Neolithic Studies Group, and taught at Oxford University.

In 1973 he was appointed keeper at the Ashmolean.

He married his third wife Jo in 1976 and the couple settled in Thame Road, Warborough.

Mr Case, who retired in 1983 and was a former county chairman of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, leaves his wife and two sons from a previous marriage.