Simon James (archaeologist)

Simon James is an archeologist of the Iron Age and Roman period and an author.

His research interests are the Roman world and its interactions with the Celts and Middle Eastern peoples.

His research has focused on ancient warfare and especially the Roman military.

He has studied the remarkably well-preserved Roman and Partho-Sasanian military remains from Dura-Europos, Syria.

In reinterpreting the evidence for mines and counter-mines dug beneath the city's walls during the Sasanian Persian siege which finally destroyed Dura about AD 256, he concluded that the Sasanian attackers had used a Greek stratagem on the Roman defenders: they asphyxiated about 20 of them with toxic smoke from burning bitumen and sulphur.