When you think of your standard town councillor, you'd be forgiven if your stereotypical view is of an older, maybe retired and looking for civic duty to keep themselves interested.

But in Wem, once councillor has decided that working for the betterment of the people in the town is one more string he can add to his very busy workload already.

Councillor George Nash represents the Labour Party for Wem West ward on Wem Town Council, but away from his council duties, he is an archaeologist and Associate Professor at the Geosciences Centre at IPT, in Tomar, central Portugal (part of the campus of Coimbra University).

Before this, George was in charge of the final part of the part-time degree at the University of Bristol where he lectured there for 18 years.

Over this time George’s research area has been prehistoric rock art. His research has taken him to many isolated spots of the world, such as the remote wilderness of Andean Chile, the Negev Desert in southern Israel and western Mongolia.

In his own words, Cllr Nash gives a flavour of what his life is like away from the busy work of Edinburgh House...

"This year, I had trips to Namibia and the Middle East (including Israel and Jordan). In 2017, I was a representative on a UNESCO committee in Mongolia where the subject of conservation management was the main theme.

In many parts of the world archaeology and rock art is under constant threat from vandalism, tourism and climate change; my role was to advise on ways to overt the threats to these unique places; not just homing in on the exotic but also in England and Wales where archaeology and cultural heritage have to compete with development, such as potential direct and indirect irreparable damage to Offa’s Dyke at Trefonen and the Old Oswestry Hillfort.

My 'discovery of a lifetime' – my claim to fame – was the discovery and dating of a possible reindeer engraving from Cathole Cave on the Gower in South Wales in 2010.

The discovery resulted in generous funding for the recording and dating of the image from Cadw, Wales’ heritage agency. The reindeer engraving was partly covered by what is referred to as stal or flowstone that is present in many limestone caves of the British Isles and Europe.

This deposit can be dated using Uranium Equilibrium Series dating. Using this process, dates of around 14,000 BP (Before Present) were obtained making this discovery the earliest engraving in North-western Europe.

The summer climate at this time was on average -10 degrees centigrade and a two-kilometre wall of ice would have stood to the north. At this time reindeer hunters would have followed migratory herds, bison, horse and mammoth across the Severn estuary which was then a treeless landmass rich in lichens, mosses and sedges.

Another area of the world where I am currently working is the Negev Desert in southern Israel where once again ancient nomadic tribes have been engraving onto exposed rock outcropping since around 4000 BCE.

The main characters engraved include camels, hunters and ibex. Later inscriptions show Arabic texts and Bedouin tribal marks. My team from the Israeli Antiquities Service and Ben Gurion University have identified since 2014 more than 75 different tribal marks within a central Negev, around the oasis and kibbitz settlement of Sde Boker. This work, along with rock art prospection in central Andean Chile is ongoing.

Closer to home, I was asked in 2015 to verify and record the so-named Epona Stone, a large boulder that contained a hidden bas-relief carved image of a horse.

"This stone, found at the western end of Old Oswestry Hillfort within a hedge boundary of a lay-by probably dates to the Iron Age when horses were considered to be highly-prized commodities that sometimes possessed symbolic and ritual powers as well. The stone now stands proud in Oswestry Town Museum.

Apart from travelling here, there and everywhere (where prehistoric rock art is present), I am a prolific writer with more than 35 books under my name; four of these have been published within the past 12 months; all associated with my passion for rock art and prehistory."