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Salon: Issue 381
7 March 2017

Next issue: 21 March 2017 


The Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter (Salon) is a fortnightly digest of heritage news. It focuses on the activities of the Society and the contributions that the Society's Fellows make to public life. A copy of Salon’s editorial policy can be found on the Society’s website.

Please send news, comment and feedback for publication to the Editor, Mike Pitts, at Salon Editor

Salon does not review books, but the Editor is pleased to receive details and front cover images of new titles written by Fellows. Scholarly publications are reviewed in The Antiquaries Journal: for details see Publications.
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Inside this issue

From the Desk of the General Secretary

 

Remembering Our Former General Secretary, Dai Morgan Evans FSA

It is with great sadness that I have to inform Fellows that David "Dai" Morgan Evans FSA, died on his birthday, 1 March (St David’s Day) 2017, after a long illness.
 
Dai, who was elected a Fellow on 23 November 1989, was General Secretary of the Society for 12 years from 1992 to 2004. Other, fuller tributes will follow and the Society will hold a memorial event at Burlington House in due course, but I thought I would say a few words based on my own personal experience of Dai, a fellow Welshman.
 
Prior to taking up the post of General Secretary he was an Inspector of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings in Cardiff (now part of Cadw), and then he subsequently moved to English Heritage. 
 
Dai became General Secretary in 1992 following the sudden and tragic death of Hugh Chapman. Dai made his own mark on the Society, where his conviviality and humour created a jovial atmosphere at social occasions. However, he also set about modernising the Society: He installed the first computer network in Burlington House and initiated the computerisation of the Library catalogue to produce an online resource available to all. It was also under Dai that Salon was started (2002) to improve communication with the Fellowship. Perhaps the issue that most consumed Dai during his time in office was the dispute with our Government landlords over the status of our occupancy at Burlington House. In this he was at least partially successful, playing a weak hand better than anyone could have had the right to expect.
 
After retiring in 2004, he became a Visiting Professor in Archaeology at the University of Chester. Dai was also the star of the Channel 4 TV series Rome Wasn't Built In A Day, which involved getting a team of modern-day builders to construct a replica Roman bathhouse at Wroxeter. This gave Dai the opportunity to showcase his formidable scholarship, combined with his irascible sense of humour and personality.
 
Until his illness, Dai was still a 'regular' at Burlington House and remained immensely popular with staff and Fellows. The last time he returned was on 2 December 2016 to attend the memorial event for his great friend John Casey, and I was so glad to be able to chat with him again and talk over the perennial issues faced by General Secretaries. I often think of Dai, and I think of what he would do if he were in my shoes and had to make some of the decisions I face: Dai set a wonderful example to me in how to do my job, and I will miss him greatly. All our thoughts are with his wife, Sheena and his family.

The funeral will be on 14 March at 1.30 pm at St Matthews Church, Surbiton, KT6 6JQ. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Share Your Memories: If you would like to share your memories of Dai, please email them to the Editor (saloneditor@sal.org.uk) for the 'Lives Remembered' section of the next Salon.
 

The Society's Response to the Highways England Consultation and A303 Tunnel Past Stonehenge

The Highways England consultation on their initial proposals for a 2.8km long bored tunnel for the A303 past Stonehenge closed on 5 March. The Society, through its Policy Committee, has responded to the consultation in a manner consistent with our previous position on the issues, as well as seeking to comment constructively in detail on points where what we consider a rational and practical solution could be improved. We have also said firmly that we wish to see in more detail exactly what the impact of the new proposals will be on the World Heritage Site, when the Highways England scheme is drawn up in more detail, and before any Development Consent Order is applied for.
 
The Policy Committee also realizes full well that there are many divergent opinions among the Fellowship about the best solution to dealing with the A303 as it passes alongside Stonehenge and through the World Heritage Site. Our response to the consultation, which can be accessed via our website, starts from the Society’s 2006 recommendation for a tunnel, then proposed as only 2.1km in length, and sees the current proposals as a positive recognition of the importance of the World Heritage Site, a potentially deliverable means of significantly reducing the adverse impact of the A303 on the landscape around Stonehenge, and of providing a solution to the bottleneck caused by the existing road.

William Morris Fruitcake Easter Offer

 

Kelmscott Manor Receives £5.50 for Each Order

Award-winning artisan baker Ursula Evans follows Morris’s fruitcake recipe almost to the letter, soaking the vine fruits in brandy, baking slowly in her AGA. ‘The luxury glace fruits used in the original William Morris fruitcake mixture are used as a topping now’, she says, ‘but otherwise, these are the cakes that the Morris family enjoyed for tea in the 1880s.’
 
Each order supports the future care and development of Kelmscott Manor, Morris's 'heaven on earth'. Christmas sales of these special cakes raised more than £270 to support conservation at the Manor. This Easter, you can choose between a cake topped with glace fruit (like the Christmas cake) or a festive marzipan topping.

To enjoy a William Morris fruitcake with family and friends this Easter, please place your order  via the My Cottage Kitchen website.

Patrick Greene FSA Leaves Museums Victoria


Two of London’s prime museum institutions are taking on new directors. Tristram Hunt started at the V&A on 20 February, telling the Evening Standard the place had to ‘work hard to find a new way of having that early spirit… which inspired Prince Albert all those years ago, about education and design and the role of cultural institutions in our public culture.’ Tate’s new Director from 1 June will be Maria Balshaw. Elsewhere, two British-educated Fellows are stepping down from leading major museums, in New York and Melbourne.
 
On 14 February Patrick Greene FSA retired after nearly 15 years as Chief Executive Officer of Museums Victoria, Australia’s largest public museums organisation. Greene believes in doing a thorough job: before moving to Victoria, he had been Director of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester for 19 years, and excavator of medieval remains at Norton Priory in Cheshire for 12 years before that. Melbourne has been ‘a great experience,’ he tells Salon, ‘and I’ve enjoyed particularly having the opportunity to present archaeological exhibitions such as A Day in Pompeii, Tutankhamun, Aztecs, Hidden Treasures of Afghanistan and work on the Royal Exhibition Building World Heritage Site.’ He will continue to chair the National Cultural Heritage Committee, hold honorary professorships at the University of Melbourne and Deakin University, and work as a cultural heritage and tourism consultant. His replacement at the Museum is Lynley Marshall, former head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s international arm.
 
INSITE Magazine, published by Museums Australia (Victoria), featured an article by Greene in which he reflected on his profession.
 
‘From the outset,’ he writes, ‘the prospect of leading a museum with several sites and encyclopaedic collections and knowledge excited me, but I was all too aware that many large museums fall victim to silos, rivalries and departmentalism. The networked museum was the antidote and what a success it has been. It has embraced all of our activities, including research, communication, exhibitions, public programs, customer service, members, governance, and commercial ventures.’
 
Public programme have expanded, there is a single collections database ('instead of 50'), and over a million items are searchable on the collections database. The Museum took responsibility for operating a Royal Exhibition Building, an IMAX cinema and a Museum carpark, and shops, a venue hire business and touring exhibitions all produce income. ‘The lesson that I have learnt’, says Greene, ‘is that an organisation that has been around for more than a century and a half can be innovative and successful and therefore safeguard its future. Age is no barrier to doing so.’
 
Among responses to changing visitor demands at the Museum, it has been using a ‘creating dementia-friendly communities’ toolkit developed by Alzheimers Australia, and an ‘autism-friendly museum’ initiative developed with Amaze/Autism Australia. Australian museums can teach people about climate warming, Greene continues, contribute to community cohesion, and ‘present the 50,000-year story of Indigenous Australians in ways that are respectful and enlightening.’

‘Museums have moved a great distance in the last few decades’, he adds, ‘from a position that was highly protective of their knowledge authority to one that values the input of the people they serve. In my experience, a welcoming attitude to people with knowledge always pays dividends.’
 
Photo shows Greene in 2011 with Museum Victoria members at a preview of Tutankhamun and The Golden Age Of The Pharaohs, the first time objects from the tomb had travelled to Australia (Jon Augier/Museum Victoria).
 

Thomas Campbell FSA Leaves The Met

 
On 28 February the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, announced that its Director and Chief Executive Officer Thomas P Campbell FSA will resign on 30 June, after eight years in the posts. Campbell joined the Met as Assistant Curator in 1995, rising to Curator in 2003, specialising in historic tapestry, a subject which featured in his PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The Met’s President, Daniel H Weiss, will serve as interim Chief Executive Officer.
 
The Museum detailed Campbell’s accomplishments in a fulsome list of exhibitions, rising attendances, new staff appointments, new galleries, opening the Met Breuer, a new Digital Department, a new Costume Institute and more. Daniel Brodsky, Chairman of the Met's Board of Directors, said that he and the Board ‘are incredibly proud of the accomplishments of the Museum during Tom’s tenure… Tom has led the Met in precisely the right direction… and we look forward to continuing to make progress in the areas he and his team have led in the years ahead.’
 
‘It was not an easy choice to step away,’ said Campbell in a statement, ‘especially at such a vital and exciting moment. That said, its current vitality is what makes this the right moment to do so. I have worked hard, and I believe my efforts have paid off. For the next stage of my career I look forward to new challenges beyond the Met, always in service of art, scholarship, and understanding.’ ‘At a moment when art and culture have an especially profound role to play in fostering mutual understanding,’ he added, ‘I am especially proud that our visitor base is the largest and most diverse in the Museum’s history. At the same time, we are on track to be financially stable and have a solid strategic path forward.’
 
The media were less generous in their assessments.
 
Campbell ‘resigned under pressure on Tuesday as the director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,’ reported the New York Times on 28 February, ‘after months of growing concerns among staff members and some trustees about its financial health and his capacity to lead the largest museum in the country.’ ‘The Met said that Mr Campbell, 54, had made the decision to leave the job he had held for eight years,’ added the Times. ‘But the circumstances surrounding his departure point to his being forced out.’ However, Campbell may not hold full responsibility for the Met’s financial difficulties, said the paper, noting that the Board backed his decision to expand into the Met Breuer (at a cost of $15 million, with running costs of $17 million a year), and an increase in digital staff.
 
George Goldner, former head of the Met’s Department of Prints and Drawings, told the Art Newspaper (shortly before the announcement of Campbell’s resignation) that Campbell had three agenda (traditional scholarship and acquisitions, an egalitarian vision and a ‘dramatic thrust into contemporary art’), each of which ‘costs a lot of money’. ‘Part of the problem’, he added, ‘is that too much was done simultaneously, and too quickly.’ ‘However, much to his credit,’ said Goldner, ‘before his time, the Met had a whiff of snobbery about it, which Tom has rightly erased.’
 
Campbell, once described by the New Yorker magazine as ‘irredeemably English’, had earlier spoken out against President Trump’s order barring people from seven Muslim-majority countries. ‘Scholarly exchanges and international collaborations are key to our ongoing work,’ he said, ‘and we are very concerned that a number of programs we have in place could be threatened, just at a time when the world needs more, not less, exchange and mutual understanding.’

Slip Slidin' Away: Solutions in Sight? 

 
Continuing a run of items in Salon about the problem of what to do with old slide collections, I can now report what looks like more than a hint of approaching light in the distance. Below we hear from Oxford with a remarkable offer. First, as Paul Stamper FSA noticed, the Government’s new UK Digital Strategy, published on 1 March, offers a promise of potential funding to those adept at framing requests.
 
The Strategy is mostly about connectivity, digital economy and digital government (‘how we will develop a world-leading digital economy that works for everyone’). However, an Annex has a note about Culture, referring to Ed Vaizey MP’s Culture White Paper (and after all, the Strategy is the responsibility of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport).
 
‘We expect culture to be accessible to all’, says the Annex, ‘with the wide benefits it brings, and digital technology has a key role to play in this aim.’
 
Technology can bring arts and culture to new audiences, inspire young people, and support teaching and learning. ‘Many of our national and local cultural institutions are digitising their collections and screening content online, opening up access, especially for those who find it difficult or are unable to visit.’ ‘Digitisation can support heritage conservation and protection,’ continues the Annex, referring to a new Cultural Protection Fund and the use of 3D imaging.
 
The DCMS promises to consider ‘how arts and cultural organisations can make the most of the opportunities offered by digital technologies, and how to make the UK one of the world’s leading countries for public collections content;’ to consider ‘how museums in England can use digital technology to improve audience engagement with collections;’ and to ‘undertake a major enhancement and rationalisation of heritage records nationally and locally, including an update and improvement of Historic England’s customer-facing IT.’

It’s not hard to imagine how digitising many private collections of colour slides from the last century would tick all the right boxes. Here is the opportunity, with funding support, to pioneer a world-leading approach to saving cultural records and making them available to the public, using digital technology. One thinks of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which tapped into a previously inaccessible source of cultural information – shedfulls of metal antiquities collected by detectorists – and created a massive, highly detailed and informed digital resource, accessible freely online (though, as online comments to a piece about detecting by Simon de Bruxelles in the Times of 4 March show, not everyone approves).
 
The Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, is ahead of the game. Sally Crawford FSA, Co-Director with Katharina Ulmschneider FSA of HEIR (the Historic Environment Image Resource Project), writes:
 
‘We at the Historic Environment Image Resource, are happy to offer a solution to the 35mm “problem”. We are happy to digitize Fellows' 35mm collections for free, and will add them to our online database of images. Fellows may choose whether their images are view-only, or whether the public may download low resolution images of their pictures for private and research purposes. Images will be scanned at high resolution: Fellows will be given high resolution copies of their slides if they wish. Fellows will retain copyright of their images, and all images will be fully attributed to the Fellow. In return, Fellows licence HEIR to use their images to raise funding to sustain HEIR.
 
‘In addition to the online database, Fellows may choose to add their images to our crowdsourcing platform, HEIRtagger, helping to promote research into changing monuments and landscapes over time.
 
‘Where there are exceptional collections, we have limited space to keep some 35mm sets here at the Institute of Archaeology, and are working to bring in funding for further storage.
 
‘We can also give advice on how to manage large collections on the basis of our experience digitizing the glass plate negatives, lantern slides and 35mm slides at the School of Archaeology, in particular what should be retained against what might be discarded.’
 
The picture, taken from HEIR, shows excavations at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, in 1940.

• ‘Delighted to realise I’m not alone in rescuing all the “precious” things in the attic from the executors’ skip,’ writes Crispin Paine FSA. ‘I had one success: the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT accepted my collection of slides of Islamic architecture. (though as a “things” person I’m sad they only copied them, dumping the slides themselves.) Now I’ve got to find a home for a boxful of museums ephemera from the ‘60s to the ‘90s. Of course I think they are priceless – crucial to anyone researching UK museums in that period. But archivists seem less than wild with enthusiasm. So they do for the 30-something box files of guidebooks…’
 

When Chequebooks Owned National Culture 




The Department for Culture, Media & Sport published Export of Objects of Cultural Interest 2015–16 in February, the latest annual survey of treasures whose buyers hoped to take them out of the UK. ‘It has been an extremely busy and eventful period for the Reviewing Committee,’ says the report. Twenty-one works were temporarily deferred from export, of which nine are now in ‘collections and archives accessible to the general public’. If that sounds like small fry (there were 10,585 applications for export licences in the period), in a wilder time not so long ago there were no export controls, and losses to the nation’s heritage were extraordinary. John Harris FSA has been on the trail.
 
Harris, says Robin Stumner writing in the Observer of 5 March, ‘is the only historian to have studied the export of artefacts from the UK’. ‘I lived in New York in the early 1960s,’ Harris told the paper. ‘Around 20 houses on Park Avenue alone had old English rooms. Hundreds, if not in the low thousands, of items [are unaccounted for]. Some of the finest craftsmanship. At least 200 rooms were taken apart.’ We have underestimated the number of such rooms in the US, he adds. ‘It is unclear what is in storage, what the Hearst people have. It is odd that there has never been an effort to identify what is in the States.’
 
In 1974 Harris, Roy Strong FSA and Marcus Binney FSA co-curated the Destruction of the Country House exhibition at the V&A, which encouraged the founding of SAVE Britain's Heritage, of which Binney is currently Executive President and Harris a Trustee. Now, according to the Observer, Strong and Harris are hoping Britain’s ‘lost heritage’ can be tracked down.
 
From the 1880s to the 1940s entire historic interiors were shipped across the Atlantic, to be bought by the likes of William Randolph Hearst, John D Rockefeller, JP Morgan and Henry Frick. The owners of Gwydir Castle, Conwy, have been searching for 16th-century decorative carved oak panelling, stripped from the castle and sold to Hearst in 1921, without success. Strong told the Observer: ‘There were ship-loads of early English portraits exported, not just grand things. There’s English sculpture – how much of that went to America? We don’t know. There were no export controls. A large proportion of Britain’s art history from the 16th to 18th centuries may be missing.'
 
‘I’ve always been told there are Hearst stores in the US, difficult to access,’ says Harris. ‘Efforts must be made to examine Hearst sites and open containers. But I’m past it now.’
 
In a follow-up piece in the Times on 6 March, Tom Whipple wrote that Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, ‘is backing a call to locate this missing heritage and bring it back.’ The museum ‘stands ready to help with any attempts to identify and recover lost artworks,’ said Hunt. Online comments compared the quest to bring back furnishings with Britain’s refusal to return sculptures to the Parthenon.
 
Picture shows a lost Tudor oak fireplace from Gwydir Castle in a 1921 sale catalogue (Observer).
 
• In January, Maev Kennedy FSA reported in the Guardian that the V&A had returned a Tudor panelled bedroom to Sizergh Castle, Cumbria. The museum bought the room in 1891, and the National Trust had been seeking its return since it acquired the house in 1950. ‘The response from the V&A’, wrote `Kennedy, ‘has echoes of the bitter controversy involving the British Museum and the Parthenon marbles.’ Marc Girouard FSA, writing in Country Life, commended the transfer in 1991, and the room was lent to Sizergh on long loan early this century. Ownership has finally been transferred back to the castle.
 

Fellows (and Friends)


Alan Biggins FSA, archaeological geophysicist, died in February.
 
Iain MacIvor, former Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland and a former Fellow, died in February.
 
Maurizio Tosi FSA, distinguished Italian archaeologist, died in February.
 
Appreciations appear in Fellows Remembered below. The section also contains further notices on the late Anthony Bryer FSA and the late Ivor Noël Hume FSA.
 
Dai Morgan Evans FSA, archaeologist and former General Secretary of this Society, died in March. The current General Secretary has written a tribute in his section above. I would be pleased to hear from any Fellows who would like to add to a longer tribute in the next Salon.


Archaeopress, an Oxford-based publisher run by archaeologists David Davison FSA and Rajka Makjanic, has launched a new blog with a piece by David Breeze FSA about Bearsden, where he directed excavations between 1973 and 1982. His full report, Bearsden: A Roman Fort on the Antonine Wall, was published last year by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Archaeopress have published a chattier, shorter overview, with the title Bearsden: The Story of a Roman Fort.

 
A skeleton found by chance in 1996 at Kennewick, Washington State – known to archaeologists as Kennewick Man and to native Americans as the Ancient One – was reburied on 18 February somewhere on the Columbia Plateau desert, along with several DNA samples and a stone projectile point lodged in one of the bones. A thorough scientific report on the find was published in 2014, after a complex, controversial and public saga of research, debate and politics which focussed on the ethnic and cultural identity of an individual who died some 9,000 years ago. The remains had been transferred to local tribes from the federal government under legislation signed by former President Barack Obama in December.
 
One of the most interesting discoveries in a fast changing world of research into early human variation, is a species of Homo dubbed Denis vans after a cave in Siberia. A few tiny remains were excavated, but it was only in their DNA that a new species was recognised. No DNA has yet been extracted from two skulls from central China, dated to 100,000 to 130,000 years ago, of which large parts have been found in Xuchang. Scientists describe their discovery as part eastern Eurasian – a mix of ancient and modern – and part Neanderthal. They don't mention the Siberian cave, comments Chris Stringer FSA, but ‘everyone else would wonder whether these might be Denisovans.’
 
Cretomania: Modern Desires for the Minoan Past, is edited by Nicoletta Momigliano FSA and Alexandre Farnoux. ‘Since its rediscovery in the early 20th century,’ says the blurb, ‘through spectacular finds such as those by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, Minoan Crete has captured the imagination not only of archaeologists but also of a wider public. This is shown, among other things, by its appearance and uses in a variety of modern cultural practices: from the innovative dances of Sergei Diaghilev and Ted Shawn, to public and vernacular architecture, psychoanalysis, literature, sculpture, fashion designs, and even neo-pagan movements, to mention a few examples. Cretomania is the first volume entirely devoted to such modern responses to (and uses of) the Minoan past.’ Three sections focus on modern architecture and archaeological reconstructions; on the visual and performing arts; and on literature.
 
A Gloucester-based antiquarian expert and dealer is in court, accused of illegally supplying firearms and ammunition. The prosecution alleges that Paul Edmunds imported and traded antique weapons and made ammunition on a large scale for many years. All the specially made or adapted ammunition recovered by police at over 90 crime scenes matched that found at his house, the court was told. The scenes included several fatal shootings, and shooting at a police helicopter during London riots in 2011.
 
Constable and Brighton, edited by Shan Lancaster, has a contribution from Sue Berry FSA, a specialist in Georgian and Regency resorts. The book accompanies an exhibition of the same name at Brighton Museum (8 April–8 October). Working between Brighton and London, Constable produced around 150 works in the town. The exhibition will bring together over 60 of the artist’s sketches, drawings and paintings from his time in Brighton. Focusing on his family life and walks, it will explore the impact and influence of the work he made there, his working practices and the locations and people who inspired him.
 
Angus Jackson, season director of a new run of Shakespeare’s four Roman plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, invited Mary Beard FSA in as historical adviser. Presenter John Wilson talked to Jackson and Beard on Radio 4’s Front Row on 27 February. ‘I don't like taking lessons from plays or history’, said Beard, ‘but insofar as I do here, there is something so important about the power of speech… What happens to “the will of the people” when the people aren’t told the truth? The Romans knew, as Shakespeare knew, that rhetoric was both for the good and bad.’ • The London Review of Books (6 March) has published Mary Beard’s second LRB Winter Lecture, on Women in Power. You can also hear her deliver the talk, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 7 March.
 
Culture Minister Matt Hancock has placed a temporary export bar on a George III mahogany wheel barometer. The piece is thought to have been made by a renowned Whitehurst family of clockmakers from Derby, and is one of only nine of this type known to exist. Reviewing Committee member Christopher Rowell FSA said in a press release, ‘The scientifically sophisticated design of this rare Whitehurst barometer is matched by the high quality of the carved mahogany case. No other Whitehurst barometer of this model is in a British public collection and its retention in this country is therefore highly desirable.’ The decision on the export licence application will be deferred until 22 April, extendable until 22 July if a serious intention to raise funds to purchase it is made at the recommended price of £160,000 plus VAT.
 
David Bindman FSA, Tom James FSA and Amanda Richardson FSA will be among those addressing a seminar about Tancred Borenius (1885–1948), after the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate the Finnish art historian on 23 March. The plaque, to be sited at 28 Kensington Gate, London, where Borenius lived from 1936 to 1941, is among initiatives marking the centenary of Finland’s independence. Borenius was the first professor of the history of art at UCL, and an Italian Renaissance scholar. He also practised as an archaeologist, directing excavations at Clarendon Palace near Salisbury.
 
 A new report sponsored by Historic England concludes that people who pay for the services of archaeologists often do not understand what they are talking about. Market Conditions for Expert and Specialist Heritage Skills and Services 2017 is the outcome of a project led by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, commissioned ‘to establish robust and reliable insight on present market conditions for suppliers of specialist heritage skills and services.’ ‘The client landscape’, says a release, ‘is complex: there is an appetite for independent and unbiased advice, but a lack of informed demand. Language does not help: many clients are confused and find little meaning in many heritage sector terms and phrases (including heritage sector and accreditation).’ And, perhaps, ‘client landscape’, and the distinction between ‘robust’ and ‘reliable’. See online for the full report.

On 22 February two German archaeologists were taken at gunpoint in Nigeria, and two excavation workers who followed them were shot dead. Anas Ibrahim and Adamu Abdulrahim were killed near the road between Kaduna airport and Abuja city when Professor Peter Breunig and student Johannes Behringer were kidnapped. A ransom of 60 million naira (£153,000) was demanded, but security forces apparently rescued the archaeologists without harm. A small team from Goethe University, Frankfurt, is working with Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments to investigate sites with Nok culture ceramics. Emma Cunliffe has written a detailed analysis of the incident on the Conflict Antiquities website. ‘Presumably,’ she writes, ‘the archaeologists were not targeted because of previous, completely false accusations that they were “mainly responsible” (or indeed in any way involved) in “illicit digging” of antiquities that were worth millions of dollars every year.’ ‘The airport road is exceptionally vulnerable to crime and violence,’ she adds. A crowdfunding campaign has been set up for the families of the two murdered men. Photo shows an excavation at Pangwari.
 
David Parsons FSA and Robin Milner-Gulland FSA have written Churches and Chapels of the South Downs National Park, the fifth in a series of heritage guides published by the Sussex Archaeological Society in association with the park authority. Introductory essays briefly cover a range of topics: defining a ‘church’, the development of Christianity in the area, reading the church fabric, architectural development, furnishing and fittings, wall paintings, and monuments and memorials. These are followed by a gazetteer of 60 selected churches (plus a few extras) in the Downland areas of eastern Hampshire and West and East Sussex.

The Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act received Royal Assent on 23 February. Duncan Wilson FSA, Chief Executive of Historic England, said HE was working with the government on plans for the Bill’s implementation. ‘The timing of this legislation’, he said, ‘is especially important given the recent appalling destruction of cultural property in Syria… The act is part of a new package of measures introduced by the government, which includes the creation of the Cultural Protection Fund and the development of a Military Cultural Property Protection Unit within the armed forces. These commitments send a strong message that the UK is determined to play a key part in protecting heritage worldwide.'
 

Fellows Remembered


J Alan Biggins FSA died on 9 February aged 66. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in June 2006. Director of TimeScape Surveys, an archaeological survey company specialising in geophysical and landscape survey, he had a previous career as a research scientist.
 
Biggins founded TimeScape Surveys in 1998, buying his first equipment with a compensation payment he received after taking voluntary redundancy from the Medical Research Council (MRC). He had been a Research Scientist with the MRC and a Research Associate at the Wolfson Unit of Clinical Pharmacology, University of Newcastle, during which time he published extensively in medical journals. He was also trained in ecology and analytical chemistry. He took an MA in Archaeological Survey at Durham University, and studied for a part-time MA/OS in prehistory at Newcastle University. The Hadrianic Frontier was the study area for a PhD thesis, at Durham and Newcastle.
 
David Breeze FSA has written this about Biggins’ archaeological achievements:
 
‘It is not given to many of us to revolutionise any aspect of our discipline, but Alan Biggins did this. He formed TimeScape Archaeological Surveys, at first with Julia Robinson, and with David Taylor FSA as his consultant. Alan concentrated on undertaking geophysical surveys along Hadrian's Wall and its outpost forts. While some work was undertaken on the forts, their main focus of interest was what was happening outside. Here, the extra-mural settlements proved to be far larger than hitherto appreciated. At Birdoswald, for example, the buildings stretched both to the east and to the west of the fort. At Maryport, the survey extended well beyond the fort and its extra-mural settlement, in order to place both in their wider setting, creating one of the largest geophysical surveys undertaken on any Roman frontier. Surrounding boundary ditches were plotted and in the process a typical rural settlement was found just metres from the Romanised buildings. His final report, on Carvoran, is in press.
 
‘Alan and David published their surveys together with interpretation of the layout of the settlements, noting the different plans of buildings and identifying such as possible market places. Their work could not of course date the settlements, but that task has been taken up by archaeological excavations, for example at Maryport where the temple complex, a building plot with its house and the rural settlement have been examined; together forming a worthy memorial to Alan.’
 
*

Iain MacIvor died on 17 February aged 66. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in March 1966, and resigned in 2005. He was Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland from 1980 to 1989, having started his archaeological career working for the Ministry of Public Building of Works in 1955. David Breeze FSA has written this tribute:
 
‘In 1949 Iain MacIvor went to Durham University to read English at Hatfield College, where his Master was Eric Birley FSA, an archaeologist. He took Birley’s Roman Britain special subject and fell under the spell of his charismatic teaching. Ian participated in excavations, most notably that of the Temple of Mithras at Carrawburgh on Hadrian’s Wall undertaken by Ian Richmond FSA and John Gillam FSA in 1950. Having achieved immortality through an excavation report photograph of him in the temple’s so-called ordeal pit, Iain went on to excavate the mithraeum at Rudchester also on Hadrian’s Wall.
 
‘After graduating he went to Oxford and researched under the redoubtable ancient historian C E Stevens FSA (better known as “Tom Brown”). In 1955 he was appointed an Assistant Inspector of Ancient Monuments in the Ministry of Public Building of Works and posted to Scotland. He immediately took on responsibility for the Antonine Wall, producing an in-depth report in 1957 and galvanising his office and its advisory body, the Ancient Monuments Board, into action. The core of his proposals and subsequent activities was the better protection of the monument, Rome’s most north-westerly frontier. He achieved this by adding sections of the Wall to the list of protected sites, and taking the best parts into state care.
 
‘Iain was faced with the task of tidying up the inheritance of earlier generations. Early in the 20th century there had been several excavations on the Antonine Wall which had been left open, their remains and spoilheaps now covered by trees. His main work lay at Rough Castle fort near Falkirk, where he spent several summers re-excavating the site, creating a creditable monument and then publishing the results.
 
‘Iain rose through the ranks of the Inspectorate, becoming a full inspector, Principal Inspector and finally Chief Inspector before retiring in 1989. Throughout these years, he tackled a series of difficult problems and laid paths for his successors. One major issue was the afforestation of large areas of Scotland. Iain realised that not all archaeological sites could be saved, and he created a framework for saving the best and excavating some of the others. The work he initiated at Rosal in Sutherland was particularly important.
 
‘His approach to Scheduling (adding monuments to the list of protected sites) was equally important. He isolated areas under threat, such as from the proposed aluminium plant near Inverness, and directed Scheduling programmes to them. He brought many new monuments into state care, directed the improved conservation of many such sites, and improved the guidebooks, writing many himself. His organisational skills were appreciated by the Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland whose tours he led over many years, while junior colleagues benefitted from his training.
 
‘All the while, Iain’s own concerns progressed. He became more interested in Medieval monuments and directed excavations at several castle and abbeys. But he did not stop there. He was active in the restoration of the Great Hall at Stirling Castle. He was also involved in work at other of Scotland’s royal palaces, in particular Edinburgh Castle, on which he wrote a book (1993), and Holyrood House where he investigated and recorded the rebuilding of the Palace by the Duke of Lauderdale for King Charles II. Iain acquired a particular interest in Scotland’s artillery fortifications and did much to encourage interest in these under-valued relics of Scotland’s turbulent past, taking on the challenge of improving the presentation of Fort George near Inverness, a great 18th-century barracks. Nineteenth-century prisons came under his scrutiny. And he took a special pleasure in his care for the Black House at Arnol in Lewis, built in the late 19th century. His interests were truly eclectic.
 
‘Retirement allowed Iain to return to an earlier love, the Borders and in particular the castles there. His final publication, appropriately, was on the fortified places of the Anglo-Scottish border from the beginning to the most recent past: A Fortified Frontier: Defences of the Anglo-Scottish Border (2001).’

*

One imagines Mortimer Wheeler FSA warming to the man who said this: ‘Many of my colleagues will tell you that, by profession, archaeologists “seek”. Rubbish! Real archaeologists “find”! And if they don't find, they had better search for another job.’ The words were spoken to students by Maurizio Tosi Hon FSA, and recalled by Dennys Frenez in a tribute book published in 2014 (‘My Life is Like the Summer Rose’: Maurizio Tosi e l’Archeologia come Modo di Vivere. Papers in Honour of Maurizio Tosi for his 70th Birthday, edited by C C Lamberg-Karlovsky FSA, B Genito and B Cerasetti).
 
Maurizio Tosi died on 24 February aged 72. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Society in May 2000. News of his death was published on Twitter by the National Museum Oman: Tosi had directed archaeological projects in the Sultanate since an exploratory survey in 1975, which led to the Archaeological Expedition to Baluchistan and the Oman Peninsula, of which he was Director (1978–85), and the British-French-Italian Joint Hadd Project in the Sultanate of Oman, of which he was Co-Director (1985–present).
 
Tosi studied in Rome and London before taking his PhD at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, School of Oriental Archaeology, in 1972. He then became Assistant Professor of History of Oriental Archaeology at the Oriental Institute of Naples, rising to Assistant Professor and then, in 1981, Professor of Prehistory and Protohistory of Asia. In 1994 he moved north to take up the Chair Professor of Palaeoethnology at the University of Bologna.
 
His research focussed on the formative processes of complex societies across the Middle East and Central Asia, and thinking about how these could be understood from archaeological remains. He directed and co-directed field projects in Iran, Oman, Yemen, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and the Asian parts of the Russian Federation, working with international teams; one of his first projects was in Peru. He was a Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University; the Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and the Department of Anthropology, Wellesley College.
 
Norman Hammond FSA was among friends and colleagues at a memorial event in Ravenna on 5 March. He writes:
 
‘Maurizio Tosi’s work at Shahr-i Sokhta in Iranian Seistan transformed our understanding of the development of early complex societies in the arid zone between the Tigris and the Indus, and provided a plausible model for the route and operation of the lapis lazuli trade between the mountain mines of Badakhshan in north-eastern Afghanistan and the consumer cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt between 3200 and 1800 BC. His more recent work in former Soviet Central Asia, leading to the concept of a “Turanian” interaction sphere spanning the area from Samarkand to the Arabian Sea, and then his decade and more of investigations in the Sultanate of Oman, have similarly transformed understanding of the prehistory of those regions.’ ‘Although he declared himself a Marxist,’ adds Hammond, ‘he was closer to Groucho than Karl, especially in entertainment value.’



The Times has published an obituary for Anthony Bryer FSA, who died in October, with the subheading, ‘Scholar who founded the UK’s leading Byzantine studies programme and once taught the Queen Mother how to speak in a Brummie accent.’ ‘Few scholars’, says the writer, ‘have combined the extraordinary breadth and diversity of learning, experience, wide friendships and happy family life possessed by Anthony Bryer, founder of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham. In 1996 at one of Sir Steven Runciman FSA’s famous annual lunches for her at the Athenaeum, the Queen Mother was given instruction by Bryer in how to speak with a Birmingham accent, a technique which involved pinching the nose. She wrote afterwards to say how she had enjoyed her conversation with the professor, who possessed “gentle and perceptive blue eyes behind all that hair”.’

*

David Dawson FSA writes to correct a common misconception about the late Ivor Noël Hume FSA, who died in February. I noted that Hume ‘was a founding director of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology [SPMA] and, in America, the Society for Historical Archaeology’. Dawson says this was not the first time he had seen this claim, but that the British part is wrong. Hume was asked to serve as Vice-President to the first elected council of the SPMA, the only non-resident member, but was not involved in its foundation. A possible source of the confusion is a pair of reports in Post-Medieval Archaeology 1 (1967), where an account of the founding of the Society in 1966 under the chairmanship/presidency of R J Charleston was published by one of the key prime-movers, Kenneth J Barton, followed by a note by Hume on the founding of the Society for Historical Archaeology in 1967.
 

The Wisdom of Fellows


The 2016 Antiquaries Journal (volume 16) contains a strongly worded review of The Art and Architecture of C F A Voysey: English Pioneer Modernist Architect and Designer, by David Cole. ‘The title of this book makes the spirts sink,’ begins James Curl FSA, before revealing that he found the contents even more wounding (while admitting, ‘The real value of this sumptuous publication lies in the wonderful illustrations’).
 
Robert Gibbs FSA, Professor Emeritus and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, is unhappy with what he describes as ‘unqualified abuse of the leading figures of art-historical education in 20th-century Britain.’ As the journal does not publish correspondence, he writes, he would like to express his personal concerns through Salon:
 
‘James Curl uses this [review] to attack the most endangered aspects of our cultural past that need our concern: “the nonsense spouted by Betjeman, Pevsner, Richards et al. who were determined to give Modernism a respectable ancestry it never, in truth, possessed.” This is a crude promotion of a conservative political and cultural alliance now a hundred years old.
 
‘Curl is no doubt correct to record Voysey’s dislike of the modern movement he did so much to inspire, but it was not Nikolaus Pevsner FSA who originally recognised his role alongside that of Mackmurdo, Lethaby and Mackintosh in this European phenomenon. It was, as Pevsner recognised, Hermann Muthesius, encouraged by those of Voysey’s contemporaries he met. It is worth remembering that the port-hole beloved of liner designers and Modernist alike can be traced back to Phillip Webb’s Red House for William Morris, two members of the Modernist canon who are pretty certain to have subscribed to it had they been a decade or two younger. And many of C R Mackintosh’s designs are virtually indistinguishable visually from Voysey’s, albeit, as Juliet Kinchin has reminded us, semantically quite different, given Glasgow’s more internationalist and commercial environment.
 
‘The danger of these post-Post Modern diatribes against Modernism becomes apparent every time that Mr Terry proposes to replace a large chunk of London with a monstrous mile of “Classicism” à la Ceaucescu without the finesse. Voysey, unlike the willing modernists, failed to recognise the challenges of scale and social change the new century required. His actual legacy, if we are to be more honest than appreciative, was the vast acreage of Southern and Central England smothered by Bypass Variegated and ever more pathetic evocations of gables and projecting bays in developers’ aspirational “closes” laid out for Abigail’s Party.’

*

Richard Green FSA continues to monitor the situation in York, where English Heritage’s plans to develop facilities at the Medieval Clifford’s Tower are not to everyone’s taste. A judicial review of the planning process, he writes, is set for 3 May at Leeds Crown Court:
 
‘The judge at the initial permission stage, Mr Justice Kerr, stipulated that the case itself must be heard by a senior judge because of its significance.
 
‘Meanwhile a public meeting is being held on the Eye of York (adjacent to Clifford's Tower) on 10 March at 1 pm. This will consider the proposed visitor centre in the light of the City of York Council's recently announced Castle Gateway improvement scheme, and the exciting possibility the latter opens up for creating a fine setting for both Clifford's Tower and the important 18th-century buildings nearby. Speakers will include Councillor Dave Taylor (Lord Mayor of York), Rachael Maskell MP, Councillor Johnny Hayes MBE and Anthony Crean QC (counsel acting for the judicial review applicants).
 
‘The crowdfunding website has now raised over £12,000, including an anonymous donation of £1,000, and further pledges of financial support continue to be welcome.’
 

Forthcoming Ordinary Meetings of Fellows


You can catch up on meetings you've missed by watching our lecture recordings (visit the events page and filter the results list by choosing 'past events'). Unless indicated otherwise, tea will be served at 16.15, and the Meeting will commence at 17.00 precisely. Online ballots close at noon at the date of the scheduled ballot. At Ordinary Meetings, ballots open at 16.00 and close at 16.20. The results are read at the beginning of the Meeting.

9 March: 'Lapland’s Dark Heritage: Understanding the Material Legacy of the Second World War in Northern Finland', lecture by Suzanne Thomas, FSA.

16 March:
'Between Architecture and Archaeology: George Gilbert Scott and Edward Augustus Freeman', lecture by Dr Christopher Miele, FSA.

23 March: '
Secret Places: The Unsung Lives of Medieval Churches', lecture by Martin Renshaw and Dr Victoria Harding.

30 March: 'The Chapel of the Blessed Trinity at Stonor, Oxfordshire: Some Recent Findings', lecture by David Clark, FSA.

Interested in proposing a lecture? Please download and complete the Lecture Proposal Form, and email it to Renée LaDue, the Society's Communications Manager (rladue@sal.org.uk). Please note that lecture programmes are planned between 6 and 12 months in advance.
 

Forthcoming Public Events


Public Lectures

Public Lectures are held from 13.00 to 14.00 on Tuesdays. These lectures are very popular, so advance booking is advised to be sure of a place. Details of forthcoming lectures can be found on the 'Events' page of the Society's website.

21 March: 'Faking King Arthur in the Middle Ages' by Richard Barber FSA

25 April: 'Hands Across Time: Medieval Fingerprints in Wax Seals' by Fellows Elizabeth New and Philippa Hoskin

16 May: 'The Vulliamy Clockmakers: Two Clocks in the Antiquaries’ Collection' by Fellows Jonathan Betts and Roger Smith

Click here for more information on our public lectures. We also run public tours of our building and collections (£10 per person) preceding the lectures above.
 

Society Dates to Remember


Introductory Tours for Fellows

Join us for an introductory tour of Burlington House to learn more about the Society and its resources. Whether you're a new Fellow or just haven't been to Burlington House, this is a great opportunity to learn more about your Society, your Fellowship benefits, and ways to become more involved.

Tours are free for Fellows, but booking is required: 23 March, 11 May, 29 June.
 

Regional Fellows Groups

 

South West Fellows

Want to join the South West Regional Fellows Group? If you would like to receive email updates about forthcoming meetings, you can subscribe online at: http://eepurl.com/MvHUr
 

Welsh Fellows

9 June 2017: Join us for lunch at the SWALEC Stadium, Cardiff, followed by a talk by Fellow David Jenkins (Principal Curator, Transport at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea) on his lates book, I Hope to Have a Good Passage (the Business Letter Book of Captain Daniel Jenkins, 1902-1911). Contact Bob Child FSA (bob.child@ntlworld.com) for information.

Want to join the Welsh Regional Fellows Group? If you would like to receive email updates about forthcoming meetings, email Bob Child at bob.child@ntlworld.com.
 

York Fellows

4 April 2017: Ivory: The Real Thing? The Roman Ivories from York and Brigantia by Fellows Stephen Greep and Sonia O'Connor. (18.00, Bar Convent, York.) Contact Stephen Greep, FSA, at sjgreep@gmail.com for information.

Want to join the York Regional Fellows Group? If you would like to receive email updates about forthcoming meetings in York, you can subscribe online at: http://eepurl.com/8nvxL
 

Other Forthcoming Heritage Events


2017: Courses and Workshops in the Historic Environment (Oxford)
Oxford University Department for Continuing Education has a programme of courses at Rewley House, designed to provide training in key skills for the historic environment, grounded in everyday working experience. These short practical courses are open to all, from historic environment professionals to members of the public with a keen interest in archaeology and historic buildings. The programme is endorsed by CIfA, the IHBC, the Archaeology Training Forum and FAME, and has been developed in conjunction with leading heritage practices. Courses are linked to the National Occupational Standards for Archaeology, and for Town Planning, Conservation and Building Control, and are widely accepted for continuous professional development. Details of National Occupational Standards. Full details can be found online.
8–10 March: Public Inquiry Workshop
20–22 March: Short Course in Radiocarbon Dating and Bayesian Chronological Analysis
5–6 April: The Setting of Heritage Assets and Places
11 April: An Introduction to GIS for Archaeologists
8–10 May: Condition Surveys of Historic Buildings
15–16 May: Artefacts and Ecofacts in and out of the Field
18 May: Stratigraphic Analysis in Archaeology
24 May: Project Management in Archaeology: an Introduction
7 June: Photographing Historic Buildings
20–21 June: Understanding Place: Historic Area Assessment
26 June: Archaeological Writing for Publication
5–7 July: Heritage Values and the Assessment of Significance.

Simon Thurley FSA is giving a series of free lectures in his capacity as Visiting Professor of the Built Environment at Gresham College, a positon created in 2009 for his continuing lectures on the history of English architecture. They will take place at the Museum of London, and will be accessible to the general public on a first come first served basis, beginning promptly at 6pm. Remaining lectures are:
8 March: The Value of Heritage and the Heritage of Value There was a time when old places were valued simply for their beauty and interest, but now this is not enough. Are calculations of the financial contribution of our history adding to the value of our heritage or have they fundamentally devalued it?
7 June: Fifty Years of Conservation Areas (Thurley and Desmond Fitzpatrick FSA) The first Conservation Areas were designated in 1967, today at the golden anniversary there are some 10,000 sites. The presentation will explore the origins, variety and some challenges for the future.

March: The Anglo-Saxons in Oxfordshire: Gewisse to Alfred and beyond (Woodstock)
To mark the opening of a new Anglo-Saxon exhibition at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, featuring the Watlington Hoard (on loan from the Ashmolean until 19 March), the museum is offering a series of three lectures. This significant Viking hoard, buried around the end of the 870s, includes rare coins of King Alfred the Great and King Ceolwulf II of Mercia, as well as Viking arm-rings and silver ingots. All lectures at 2.30 pm:
11 March: Rule Britannia: How Alfred the Great became a National Hero, by Oliver Cox
18 March: King Alfred’s Coins: The inside story of the Watlington Hoard, by John Naylor FSA.

16–18 March: Pocahontas and After: Historical Culture and Transatlantic Encounters, 1617–2017 (London)
A major international conference to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Pocahontas’ death. The conference will include over 50 panel sessions and a cultural day at the British Library which features two film screenings, panel debates and a musical performance. Full details online.
 


22 March: London’s Unseen Chapels: From the Notebooks of Canon Clarke (London)
An event at Lambeth Palace Library to celebrate the life and work of Canon Basil Fulford Lowther Clarke (1908–78). From the age of 15, Basil Clarke kept a record on the architecture and architects of Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches and Chapels which he visited, predominately in England and Wales but also in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The Cathedral and Church Buildings Division, Lambeth Palace Library, and the Church of England Record Centre are mounting a joint exhibition which brings to life the hidden world of London’s chapels. The event will include a lecture by Jennifer Freeman FSA, former Director of Historic Chapels Trust, entitled ‘London's Churches and Chapels; a Miscellany’, followed by a wine reception. See online for details.
 
31 March–2 April: The Archaeology of Caesar in Britain and Gaul (Oxford)
Colin Haselgrove FSA and Andrew Fitzpatrick FSA have organised a conference of international speakers to discuss Julius Caesar’s Battle for Gaul. The dramatic opening chapter in Britain’s written history, Caesar's invasions have long been neglected by archaeologists and historians, and often dismissed as a sideshow to the Battle for Gaul that left few archaeological traces and changed little. This weekend conference will explore the war's archaeology and its aftermath. Leading scholars will consider Caesar as a politician and general, the combatants, their bases, the battle sites and the lasting consequences of the Battle for Gaul. The conference will appeal to those interested in archaeology, ancient history, military history, and numismatics. Speakers include Greg Woolf FSA and Ian Ralston FSA. See online for details.
 
3–6 April: Objects and Possessions: Material Goods in a Changing World, 1200–1800 (Southampton)
Objects and possessions define us, yet in many ways we know little about them from a historical perspective. This interdisciplinary conference, which takes place at the University of Southampton’s Avenue Campus, looks at material culture across a long timeframe in order to explore the worlds of goods and objects across Europe and its overseas colonies, the connections and relationships facilitated by the exchange of goods, the importance and interpretation of the inheritance of goods and objects, and the ways in which goods brokered relationships between Europe and the wider world in the period. The aim is to deepen our understanding of how goods ‘worked’ in a variety of social, economic and cultural contexts. A closing keynote address will be given by Chris Woolgar FSA. For details see online.
 
5–7 April: Architecture and Gardening: Sister Arts. English and Czech Perspectives (Stowe)
This two-day seminar (preceded by an evening dinner) will look at the resurgence of two key historic estates: Stowe, Buckinghamshire, and Lednice-Valtice in the Czech Republic. What can we learn regarding their evolution, restoration and exploration? Lectures from leading experts in the field and guided tours will draw together ideas and experiences from two countries to establish links and best practice. Tim Knox FSA and David Adshead FSA are among the speakers, and Martin Drury FSA will chair one of the conference days. See online for details.
 
7 April: Design for Cornwall (Truro)
The Cornish Buildings Group, Cornwall Council, Royal Institute of British Architects and the Cornwall Architectural Trust present new and challenging papers at a one-day conference based around the topic of architectural design. See online for details.
 
19 April: S J Parris and Tracy Borman in conversation (London)
Prophecy writer S J Parris (the pseudonym of journalist, author and literary critic Stephanie Merritt) will swap Elizabethan stories with historian and author of The Private Lives of the Tudors Tracy Borman in the Great Hall of Lambeth Palace. On display will be the execution warrant of Mary Queen of Scots, with other Elizabethan books and manuscripts from the collections of Lambeth Palace Library. See online for details.
 
19–21 April: Archaeology: A Global Profession (Newcastle)
The Chartered Institute for Archaeologists’ Annual Conference will cover three broad themes: professionalism, protection and discovery. Archaeology should be without borders, and professional archaeology must be without borders. The conference will provide an opportunity to report on some of the progress made and to explore both the opportunities and difficulties of professionalising across borders. Confirmed sessions include ‘A Broader Vision for Brexit’, ‘Built Heritage in Conflict’ and ‘Archaeology and UK Soft Power’. See online for details.
 
20–22 April: Queen’s House Conference 2017: European Court Culture & Greenwich Palace, 1500–1750 (Greenwich)
Royal Museums Greenwich and the Society for Court Studies are pleased to announce a major international conference to mark the 400th anniversary year of the Queen’s House, Greenwich. Designed by Inigo Jones in 1616 and completed in 1639, this royal villa is an acknowledged masterpiece of British architecture and the only remaining building of the 16th and 17th-century palace complex. Today the Queen’s House lies at the centre of the World Heritage Site of Maritime Greenwich, where the conference will be held. Keynote speakers will include Simon Thurley FSA. Full details online.

22 April: Late Iron Age Oppida (Reading)
A day conference at the Henley Business School, University of Reading Whiteknights Campus, which will examine current understanding of British Iron Age oppida. Ten invited speakers representing some of the most exciting and up to date research projects on Iron Age towns and their environs will present their thoughts and recent findings. There will also be discussion and debate on present and future directions for research in this area. Speakers include Michael Fulford FSA, Tom Moore FSA, Colin Haselgrove FSA, David McOmish FSA, Philip Crummy FSA and Stewart Bryant FSA. See online for details.

6 May: The Fruitful Body: Gender and Image (London)
The Women’s Studies Group 1558–1837 holds its annual workshop at the Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ. Karen Hearn FSA, keynote speaker, will talk on ‘Women, agency and fertility in early modern British portraits.’ Early modern painted portraits are constructs (like literary texts). They result from choices – to include, to exclude – and were made for specific contexts and purposes. Hearn’s paper will consider 16th- and early-17th-century British portraits of women, and will address the types of information that they offer today. All participants are invited to prepare a contribution of no more than five minutes, from any discipline related to the speaker's subject, with 30 copies of any handouts.  See online for further information.
 
6 June: Liturgical Books and the Medieval Library (London)
It has long been conventional in the history of books and book collections of the Middle Ages to draw a distinction between liturgical books and library books. In practice, however, the distinction was less clear-cut. Tessa Webber FSA will examine the evidence to question how far the conventional bi-partite categorisation of books as 'liturgical' and 'library' reflects the way in which books were conceived during the Middle Ages. at Lambeth Palace Library. At Lambeth Palace Library. Contact juliette.boyd@churchofengland.org.
 
17–18 June: Norwich and the Medieval Parish Church c 900–2017: The Making of a Fine City (Norwich)
A conference hosted by the Medieval Parish Churches of Norwich Research Project (undertaken at the University of East Anglia and funded by The Leverhulme Trust). All 58 churches, existing, ruined or lost, are included in the project, which seeks insight into how the medieval city developed. The conference (supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art and Purcell) will present the churches in their immediate local context and in the broader framework of urban churches in Britain and northern Europe. Subjects will include documentary history, the architectural fabric of the buildings and their place in Norwich topography, the development of architecture and furnishings, the representation of the churches and their post-Reformation history. Speakers will include local and international scholars, as well as the UEA research team, Brian Ayers FSA, Clare Haynes, T A Heslop FSA, and Helen Lunnon FSA. Details to be announced.
 
23–25 June: The Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland: Results, Implications and Wider Contexts (Oxford)
This weekend conference will provide an opportunity to explore some of the results of the AHRC-funded Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland project and to set these into wider contexts. Papers will be presented by members of the Atlas team as well as by colleagues working on related themes within and beyond Britain and Ireland. Members of the Hillfort Study Group, and of the Project Steering Committee have been invited to chair sessions and lead discussion. All are welcome to attend and a particular invitation is extended to those who contributed to the Citizen Science initiative associated with this project. Speakers include Eileen Wilkes FSA, Ian Ralston FSA, Mark Bowden FSA, Rachel Pope FSA, Kate Waddington FSA and Gary Lock FSA. See online for details.
 
24 June: Memorials in the Marches (Ludlow)
St Laurence's Church houses a fine set of memorials to people associated with the Council of Wales and the Marches over the period 1550–1650. The Ludlow Palmers, who raise money for the Conservation Trust for St Laurence, an independent charity devoted to conserving the church’s fabric and treasures, are hosting a conference in the church, on the church monuments, in association with the Church Monuments Society. Fellows can obtain a 15% discount. See online for details.
 
6 July: A National Church Tells its Story: The English Church Pageant of 1909 (London)
Arthur Burns (King’s College, London) gives a talk after the Annual General Meeting of the Church of England Record Society. At Lambeth Palace Library. All are welcome, contact juliette.boyd@churchofengland.org.

21 October: The Long Sunset: the Country House c 1840–1940 (Lewes)
Sue Berry FSA introduces this conference on the theme of how the country house and its setting changed in design and function between 1840 and 1939, comparing the grand houses of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, with their formal gardens and large staff, with the more intimate houses and gardens of the Arts and Crafts movement and subsequent developments. Speakers include Michael Hall FSA and Marilyn Palmer FSA. Visits related to the conference are planned throughout 2017. See online for details.
 

Call for Papers

 
17–18 May 2017: Archaeology and History of Lydia from Early Lydian Period to the Late Antiquity (Izmir, Turkey)
This symposium will take place at the Dokuz Eylul University. Lydia was an ancient region, located in inner western Anatolia, and compared to the coastline of western Asia Minor its archaeology is not well known. We warmly invite contributions by scholars and graduate students from a variety of disciplines of ancient classical studies related to this region. The aim of the symposium is to report on the state of research concerning Lydia between the 8th century BC and 6th century AD. See online for details.
 

Vacancies



Historic England is recruiting an Architectural Investigator. Closing date for applications 12 March.
 
Alongside a deep interest in, and knowledge of, British buildings, you will have a degree in Architectural History, Archaeology, Art History, History, or a related discipline. You may also have experience of working in the heritage sector in a similar investigation role. You will enjoy the detailed analysis of visually interrogating a building or place and have the ability to adapt your written and oral communications to suit your audience. The post is based at the Historic Places Investigation Team West in Swindon. Full details online.


Sir John Soane’s Museum, London is appointing a Director of Development and Communications. Closing date for applications 27 March 10 am.
 
The Museum seeks a dynamic and enterprising individual to lead its small but highly accomplished Development team. Having just finished a successful £6 million Catalyst Challenge Grant, the Museum stands poised to develop new strategies to cultivate existing and new relationships with corporate partners, foundations, individuals, and legacies. Together with the Director and Senior Management Team, the new Director of Development will be at the centre of mapping out the future path of this distinguished, historic museum. Full details online.

Propose a Lecture or Seminar


Please download and complete the Lecture Proposal Form, and email it to Renée LaDue, the Society's Communications Manager, if you are interested in giving a lecture at one of the Society's Ordinary Meetings (Thursday evenings at 17.00) or as part of our Public Lecture series (occasional Tuesday afternoons at 13.00). We welcome papers based on new research or themes related to the Society's field of interest: the study of the material past. You can view our current lecture programme in the Events section of our website.

Fellows are also encouraged to propose topics or themes for conferences or seminars that bring scholars and professionals from a variety of disciplines together to explain, discuss and debate our material culture. Please download and complete the Conference Proposal Form, and email it to Renée LaDue, the Society's Communications Manager, if you are interested in helping us organise such an event.

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