DAVID WILSON excelled as a classical scholar and Roman archaeologist, as an aerial photographer, and as a historian of dance. David Raoul Wilson was born in 1932. His interest in Roman archaeology developed at school when he learnt excavation techniques from Professor Sheppard Frere on the bombed sites of Canterbury. A scholarship in classics to Oriel College, Oxford, caused him to delay his National Service until 1955, though four years in the Oxford University Cadet Force allowed him to complete eight weeks of basic training and to pass the selection board for officer training before graduation and his call-up. He passed out from Mons Officer Cadet School as Senior Cadet with the Stick of Honour and was posted to 1 RHA at Münster (Westfalen). Though tempted to consider a short-service commission he decided to return to Oriel to become an archaeologist.

Supported by a scholarship and then the fellowship of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, he undertook two seasons of fieldwork in northern Anatolia (Bithynia, Paphlagonia and Pontus). As Wilson was beginning to write up in his third year of study, Professor Sir Ian Richmond invited him to become his research assistant at Oxford.

While finishing his PhD thesis, he worked as a Roman archaeologist, assisting Miss M. V. Taylor, editor of The Journal of Roman Studies and working with Richmond on the revision of R. G. Collingwood’s classic The Archaeology of Roman Britain (1930). He was pleased that he was able to exert “great influence” in the choice of illustrative material for the revised work.

In 1965 after an exhilarating trial flight, Wilson began his second career as an aerial photographer, joining Kenneth St Joseph’s pioneering team of aerial photographers and photo-interpreters at the Cambridge University Committee for Aerial Photography (CUCAP). He was also responsible for overseeing the publication of the revised The Archaeology of Roman Britain, and was appointed St Joseph’s senior research assistant in 1965, in which year he married Gay Marsden. Their marriage survived only into the mid-1970s, and they celebrated their amicable separation with a fancy dress ball.

While with CUCAP he developed new skills involving oblique and vertical survey photography that was relevant to many areas of research: agriculture, archaeology, ecology, forestry, geology and geographical subjects of all kinds. He submerged himself in undergraduate and extramural teaching and the publication of educational textbooks such as the Roman Frontiers of Britain (1967).

In these years the Cambridge flying programme extended its range from mainland Britain to Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Denmark. It was also the period when simple archaeological reconnaissance began to expand into the mature sub-discipline that it now is. Wilson’s contribution to that growth took many influential forms. In the air he was responsible for hundreds of archaeological discoveries, many of them never acknowledged, while, on the ground, his rigorous standards ensured the consistent technical excellence of the CUCAP collection and its supporting catalogues. He was elected a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, in 1971, and edited the papers presented at an international symposium in London, Aerial Reconnaissance in Archaeology (1975).

The Council for British Archaeology adopted the symposia committee as its own research committee in archaeological aerial photography in 1975 and Wilson was one of its most distinguished members for many years. He served as chairman of the committee for the Anglian region — comprising Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire — and was instrumental in the establishment of the Aerial Archaeology Foundation and the journal, Aerial Archaeology.

He was a founder member of the Aerial Archaeology Research Group (AARG) and he made regular contributions to both the annual conference and the group’s newsletter. He played an important role as a catalyst for the publication of books and articles about aerial photography, including the splendid Cambridge Air Survey volumes published under his direction during the 1980s and 1990s, which brought the message of aerial photography to new audiences in the UK and around the world.

Wilson was a founder member of the National Association of Aerial Photographic Libraries (NAPLIB), honorary secretary (1989-93), president (1993-96) and past President (1996-98) and the driving force behind the publication of the NAPLIB Directory of Aerial Photographic Collections in the United Kingdom (1993), and his own The Care and Storage of Photographs: Recommendations for Good Practice (1997). He was a perpetual inspiration to all who care for air photographs and appreciate their irreplaceable importance as sources of information and understanding about the landscapes of yesterday and today.

When Professor St Joseph retired from Cambridge in 1980, the university declared his Chair to be personal and Wilson, who richly deserved the accolade, was instead appointed curator, an increasingly demanding role that combined the traditional skills of aerial photographer, archival conservator, librarian, academic researcher and teacher combined with entrepreneurial ability to ensure CUCAP’s survival in an increasingly competitive university world.

In addition to his editorial role at Cambridge, Wilson produced a stream of papers on subjects as diverse as Neolithic causewayed enclosures, Roman-Celtic Temples (1975) Roman Villas (1974), Roman forts and smaller Roman towns. His study of the mechanics of crop mark formation led to Air Photo Interpretation for Archaeologists (1982, revised 2000), one of the most accessible introductions to the discipline.

In 1980, shortly after their marriage, Wilson’s second wife, Elizabeth Wallwork, led him to the dance floor, launching him into his third career. She introduced him to early dance and the Capriol Society for Courtly Dancing, and his research yielded several excellent books on the subject, including Domenico of Piacenza (2006), a transcript of a 15th-century Italian dance treatise.

Retirement from university work in 1997 allowed Wilson to concentrate on historical dance. In the following years, alongside his voluntary work with the Cambridge Cancer Help Centre and others, he helped to set up a national resource centre for historical dance for the Early Dance Circle and catalogued its substantial archive. In February the Early Dance Circle recognised his contribution to the study of early dance with the first Peggy Dixon Trophy.

In his final weeks Wilson was hard at work updating Roman Britain from the Air 1977-84 (1987) and had already completed the first revision, from 1985 to 1990, with Rebecca Jones. He also finished his magnum opus, the complete study of the basse danse from its earliest form to the latest, found in the late 16th-century volumes of Caroso and Negri. This is now awaiting publication in the US.

His wife, Elizabeth, predeceased him in 1993.

David Wilson, aerial archaeologist, was born on October 30, 1932. He died on August 6, 2006, aged 73.