Sue Mairi Margeson, B.A., B.Phil., Ph.D., A.M.A.

Sue Margeson was born in Canada on 17 June 1948, but moved to England with her Irish mother and Canadian father at the age of six and attended the Perse School in Cambridge. She read English and medieval studies at York University and graduated with first-class honours in 1970, having acquired an interest in medieval literature, especially Old Norse sagas. This took her to Norway for a year and then to University College, London, where she was awarded a doctorate for her thesis on the iconography of the Sigurd legend as depicted by Viking artists and craftsmen. Two years spent in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum were followed in 1979 by her appointment as assistant keeper of archaeology at Norwich Castle Museum - a post from which her energy and enthusiasm helped to invigorate the archaeological life of the region. Promoted to keeper in 1994, she occupied that position with distinction until her death at the age of 48. Although funding was always tight, Margeson maintained rigorously high standards at the museum and in her own researches but always found time for the Norfolk metal detector enthusiasts who brought their finds to her for identification and recording. On arrival at Norwich she immediately began to publish, beginning with a paper on medieval horse-harness in Norfolk Archaeology (1979). From 1988 to 1993 she co-edited the Medieval Archaeology Journal and her translation, with Kirsten Williams, of Else Roesdahl's The Vikings (1991), is a classic. Much of Margeson's time was spent in studying the finds from the excavations of the Norfolk Survey carried out in the 1970s and her major work arising from this research, Norfolk Households, (1993) is far more than the usual catalogue of surviving artefacts. On the other hand, Margeson's own enthusiastic approach to archaeology made her a natural populariser and she reached lay audiences through her vivid lectures throughout the county and publications such as Life on a Medieval Street, (1985), co-authored with Malcolm Atkin; The Normans in Norfolk (1994) and Viking (1994) in the Eyewitness series. Her final publication, an original contribution on the Vikings in Norfolk appeared in A Festival of Norfolk Archaeology (1996). Margeson was a founder member of the Finds Research Group through which archaeologists country-wide co-operate in identifying obscure objects. For recreation she turned to music. An accomplished and sensitive double-bass player since childhood, she loved early and baroque music, especially that of J. S. Bach, and in 1984 she joined a group of musicians which met annually at Prussia Cove, near Penzance, for a week of playing and convivial company. She always looked forward to this annual holiday and in 1990 she met her future husband there. She died on 26 February 1997.