Raksha Dave

Raksha Dave (born 22 August 1977) is an archaeologist, TV presenter and the current president of the Council for British Archaeology.

Raksha Dave
Dave at the British Library in 2024
Born	(1977-08-22) 22 August 1977 (age 47)
Occupations	Archaeologist TV presenter author
Known for	Time Team Digging for Britain
Academic background
Alma mater	University College London
Academic work
Institutions	Museum of London Archaeology Service Pitt Rivers Museum

Early life and education

Dave is from Lancashire.^[1] Dave graduated with a degree in Archaeology from the UCL Institute of Archaeology in 1999.^[2]

Career

Dave worked with a commercial archaeological unit, primarily excavating in London with the Museum of London Archaeology Service.^[2] She also excavated at the World Heritage Site of Catalhoyuk in Turkey, and sites in Texas and Puerto Rico.^[3]

Dave featured regularly on Time Team between 2003 and 2013 as a field archaeologist.^[4] She was a presenter on season 7 of Digging for Britain, broadcast in 2018.^[2] She presented the BBC Learning Zone Ancient Voices programme on prehistory, broadcast in 2015,^[5] and co-presented Pompeii’s Final Hours: New Evidence for Channel 5.^[2]

Other TV work includes The Bone Detectives (2020) and Digging Up Britain's Past (2020).

Dave is an advocate for increasing the diversity of archaeologists,^[6] was a trustee for the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) and is a patron of its Young Archaeologists Club.^[2] In July 2021 CBA announced that Dave had taken up the three-year presidency of the organisation.^[7]

She is a co-founder of the archaeological social-enterprise DigVentures.^[8]

Dave is a research affiliate of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.^[2]

Personal life

In April 2017, Dave married Nigel Jeffries, an expert in medieval and post-medieval pottery at the Museum of London.^[9]