Martin Bell is Emeritus Professor of Archaeological Science in the Department of Archaeology at Reading University. His research focuses on the contribution which archaeology makes to an understanding of environmental change on a wide range of timescales, particularly through the analysis of soils, sediments and molluscs, land and marine. Soil erosion in prehistory, experimental archaeology and coastal environments have been the subject of major, long-term programmes of fieldwork and excavations in the Severn Estuary, particularly at Brean Down, Goldcliff and Redwick revealing Mesolithic settlements and human and animal footprints, many Bronze Age and Iron Age buildings and wooden structures such as trackways and fish traps.