Roger Farnworth was an unorthodox archaeologist who brought to his work the fearlessness and the generosity of spirit he showed in his art, poetry, philosophy and writing.
Roger was renowned in Cornish archaeological circles as a sharp but generous questioner of many an unsuspecting visiting lecturer, and an equally sharp questioner of a place or a thing. He would readily query the given and rarely quietly accepted the assumed. But he argued his point confident that he himself also vigorously and rigorously pursued answers to his own questions. He did much exploratory archaeology, especially in his local area, Bodmin Moor. He was a close and comprehensive observer of cairns, quoits and circles, viewing them and their current interpretations from new angles, imagining all possibilities and recognizing unexpected connections by being sympathetic to the under-valued aspects of place, or landscape, or human activity.
Roger took a modern approach to landscape, seeing it as not just about environment, and not just about views. He was interested in the ways that people were affected by the natural world, and the ways they affected it, in the present as well as in the past. He expected past people to have been at least as sensitive to place as he was, and to have been as aware as he was of their being both animal and human.
This made Roger an optimistic archaeologist. He was never satisfied that people act or acted in ways that are or were merely functional or economic. Instead, he was more interested in how and why we and they developed and expressed attachment to place.
Roger read widely and quizzically in the archaeological literature, and also brought to bear on his archaeology his thoughts based on a much broader knowledge – including philosophy (in which he was a graduate), art, ethnography, comparative religion and astronomy.
Roger was also closely knowledgeable about his place, Bodmin Moor, knowing its geography, patterns and landscape potential. He worked hard on the Moor, pursuing passions, including sleeping rough on Rough Tor itself to see the solstice sun rise and criss-crossing apparently empty downlands, searching for a monument he felt sure must be there because his theories predicted it.