Alternative meaning: Richard Atkinson (educator)

Richard John Copland Atkinson (1920-1994) was a British prehistorian and archaeologist.

He was born in Dorset and went to Sherbourne School and then Magdalen College, Oxford, reading PPE. During the Second World War his Quaker beliefs meant that he served in non-combatant roles in 1944 he became Assistant Keeper of Arcaheology at the Ashmolean Museum.

He investigated sites including Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow and Wayland's Smithy and was a friend and collaborator of Stuart Piggott. His Silbury work was part of an aborted BBC documentary series on the monument. In 1949 he was made a lecturer at Edinburgh University and in 1958 moved to Cardiff to become its first professor of archeology. He remained at the University of Wales until he retired in 1983. He received the CBE in 1979 and work continued long after his death in writing up his prolific excavations.

Atkinson was famous for his practical contributions to archaeological technique and his pragmatic solutions to on-site problems which were listed in the handbook he wrote called Field Archaeology.