Simpson spent her early years in Newcastle, where her father F. G. Simpson was Director of Archaeological Field Research.[1] F. G. Simpson was involved with excavations at various sites along Hadrian's Wall and was the Director of Field Studies, Durham University Excavation Committee from 1924 until 1930.[2] Simpson went to school at Penrhos College.[1] She served as a nurse during the Second World War.[1]
After the war, Simpson studied at UCL Institute of Archaeology, graduating with a Diploma in European Archaeology in 1948. Her fellow students included Nancy Sandars and Edward Pyddoke.[3][1] Simpson's memories of her time at the IoA were published in Archaeology International in 2000.[4] Between 1950 and 1954 she was a research assistant to Eric Birley at Durham University.[1] Between 1950 and 1972 Simpson was the Honorary Curator of the Clayton Collection of antiquities at Chesters Roman fort.[5] She undertook postgraduate study at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and was awarded her DPhil[6][7] from Oxford in 1960. The subject of this thesis was published in 1964 as Britons and the Roman Army: A Study of Wales and the Southern Pennines in the 1st-3rd Centuries.[8] She taught at Oxford for the Department of Extra-Mural Studies and was a visiting fellow at Haverford College, Pennsylvania.[1]
Simpson's study of the late Joseph Stanfield's investigations into Samian ware resulted in the 1958 publication of Central Gaulish Potters, which was described by Howard Comfort in 1979 as "the outstanding single achievement" of British samian studies,[9] and remains an essential work for the study of the subject more than fifty years on.[1] An updated French edition was published in 1990.[10] Simpson was one of the early members of the Rei cretariae Romanae fautores, a specialist study group for Roman ceramicists, following its founding 1957 and organised the 14th Congress of the society in Oxford and London in September 1984.[11][12]
