The son of doctor Frank Edward Tylecote, he was born in Manchester and educated at Oundle School.
In 1953 he was appointed as a lecturer at Newcastle University, where he became a Reader in Archaeometallurgy, a post from which he retired in September 1978.
In 1976 he began teaching Archaeometallurgy at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, which led to him becoming an honorary Professor there in 1979.
Having been born in Sønderborg Castle, she had previously changed her name to Berndt, to avoid association with pro-Nazi elements of the aristocratic Reventlow family, and spent much of World War II in Palestine and Egypt.
Both Ronald and Elizabeth Tylecote maintained pro-Communist sympathies until the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956.