Join Us for the Anniversary Meeting: 27 April

The Anniversary Meeting of the Society will be held in the Meeting Room, Burlington House, on Thursday, 27 April 2017 at 15.30 (Fellows only). The Ballots for President, Treasurer and for three Ordinary Members of Council are uncontested this year and therefore will not take place. The Fellows who are candidates for the vacant posts are:

• As President for a second term: Gillian Margaret Andrews, BA, MCIfA
• As Treasurer: Stephen Lloyd Dunmore, OBE, BA
• As Ordinary Council Members: (1) Alan Brian Lloyd, BA, MA, DPhil; (2) John Michael Maddison, BA, PhD, Hon Dr of Arts; (3) Elizabeth Mary Hallam Smith, CB, PhD, FRSA, FRHistS

Tea will be then be served to Fellows and guests at 16.15, and will be followed at 17.00 by the presentation of the Society Medal to Fellow Adrian Babbidge and the President’s Anniversary Address. Our Anniversary Meeting Reception will be held afterwards in the Library, where Fellows and guests will be invited to enjoy drinks, refreshments and the most recent displays of material from the Library's collections. Please reserve your place for the Reception (£10.00) by 20 April (book online or by contacting our Executive Assistant Jola Zdunek at 020 7479 7080).
 

Meet Our New Collections Manager

On 3 April, Lucy Ellis joined the staff as Museum Collections Manager with responsibility for managing the museum collections at Burlington House. Lucy has come to us from the British Museum, where she was Assistant Collections Manager with responsibility for the care and access to objects in the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory, and she is already familiar with many of our objects that are on long-term loan to the British Museum. Previously, she also worked at Winchester Museums Service on the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and Sussex Archaeological Society as Finds Liaison Assistant. Lucy has a Bachelor's in Ancient World Studies and a Master's in Artefact Studies.
 

Research Grants 2017

We are are very pleased to announce that the three-year Research Grant made possible by the generosity of Dr Edward Harris FSA has been awarded to Prof Roger Matthews FSA (Reading University) to support the project Early Neolithic in Iran: Excavations at Sheikh-e-Abad. The project will investigate the transition from mobile hunter-forager to sedentary farmer-herder at one of the earliest Neolithic sites in Iran, Sheikh-e Abad, Kermanshah. Excavation will focus on the early stages of a 10m-deep sequence of Pre-Pottery Neolithic occupation, dated ca. 9800 BC to 7600 BC, which provides a unique opportunity to investigate early herding and domestication of animals such as wild goat, and plants such as cereals, as well as the transition from seasonal mobility to year-round sedentism and early architecture.

The Society awarded 20 research grants and five travel awards amounting to £81,000 (including the three-year award above). We continue to support the study of hominin remains in South Africa, the landscape of Old Sarum and the dating of old Welsh houses. We are also supporting, among others, the study of Lindisfarne in its European context, prehistoric Gower, innovative work on supplying water to Rome and European Men’s Clothing 1600-1850.

For a full list of recent recipients, please visit our website. There, you can also find information on applying to the programme for 2018.
 

Antiquaries Journal Call for Papers

Papers are sought for the Antiquaries Journal, especially on industrial archaeology, urban architecture from the Tudor period onwards, and the influence of antiquarianism on public heritage policy, ethics and practice. Papers should take an overview of a particular period, issue or set of problems, be based on primary research, and be no more than 10,000 words. Please email your papers to Lavinia Porter via lporter@sal.org.uk.

Ahead of the Grand National on 8 April – an annual race in which betting odds rarely have much relevance to which jockeys survive the unusually large fences – I thought I’d start this Salon with two stories about horses.
 
Marengo, said to have been one of Napoleon’s favourite stallions, features in new displays at the National Army Museum, Chelsea, London, which re-opened on 30 March after a three-year, £23.75 million development. The horse's remains have been restored by Arianna Bernucci at the Natural History Museum (below).
 
A least two of Napoleon’s horses are said to have survived, and both have a curious and not entirely clear afterlife. Le Vizir is skin and hair, now in the Army Museum in Paris (having been smuggled out of the country in a suitcase in 1839, remounted for display in Manchester’s Natural History Museum, and returned to France in 1868). Marengo is a skeleton, and two errant feet. One hoof apparently lives on as a silver snuffbox and is in the Household Cavalry Museum, loaned by a private owner; the other may be owned by the Foot Guards, though it’s strangely difficult to pin down these famous feet.
 
The official line is that Napoleon acquired Marengo, a light grey Arab stallion, from Egypt in 1799. The horse was captured 16 years later at Waterloo (where records suggest the Emperor may not have been riding him), and shown to the public in London. He died in 1831.
 
Meanwhile in Ireland, two villages, Buttevant and Bartlemy, lay separate claims to the horse, on the grounds that Napoleon had bought it not in Egypt, but at a fair in Co Cork – a story that goes back to the 19th century. Alternatively, Jill Hamilton wrote in her book Marengo: The Myth of Napoleon's Horse (2000) that Marengo surfaced only in London, perhaps at the hands of enterprising impresarios; she could find no contemporary record of it in France. Visites Privées made a short film about the horse last year. Olivier Chebrou-des-Lespinats, standing in the grand Marengo Room of the Chateau de Malmaison et des Bois, Paris, notes the curious absence of official references to the horse, or any grand portraits: but, he says, he certainly existed and was a mount prized by the Emperor.

Simon Parfitt, an archaeological faunal specialist at the Natural History Museum, suggested to me that possible war wounds and isotopes from the teeth could throw significant light on the National Army Museum’s steed and its origins. Comparison between the skeleton and portraits could also be productive – including this oil by Antoine-Jean Gros (1801, top), sold by Sotheby’s in 2012 and said to show Marengo (Wikimedia/Sotheby’s). And also, perhaps, ‘a massive mural of the famous painting of the white charger, rearing up with Napoleon on his back,’ which once covered the end wall of the former Barry’s pub in Buttevant. The mural has been painted over, but should still be there.
 

The remains of a pair of horses have been found in East Yorkshire, lying on their sides with their skulls facing each other and their front legs apparently intertwined, in a shallow grave in Pocklington. They have not yet been scientifically dated, but they were probably buried between around 400 and 100 BC. Barring a remarkable coincidence, they had been sacrificed to accompany the body of someone who had once driven them in front of a chariot. The remains of both rider and two-wheeled cart, as some archaeologists would prefer to call it, were also found in the grave, which is so shallow it may be that a mound, since gone, was raised over the funerary arrangement placed on the surface of the ground.
 
This is not the first grave of this age to have been excavated at Pocklington. Ahead of a large new housing development, David Wilson Homes commissioned MAP Archaeological Practice to investigate archaeological remains identified in evaluations conducted as part of the planning process. To date some 75 square-ditched barrows have been excavated, and the remains of 150 people; the ponies (these are not large beasts) were found in February, at the start of the second stage of the development.
 
Such cemeteries are distinctive of this era in East Yorkshire, which was identified by classical writers in the second century AD as the territory of the Parisi. The similarly named Parisii, who gave their name to the modern French capital city, occupied a territory in France where chariot burials are also found, and archaeologists agree that there must have been some form of link between the two areas in late prehistory, though no one has much idea about how it operated. (Archaeological visitors to Tate Britain’s popular David Hockney exhibition – which closes on 29 May – may recognise some of Hockney’s huge, bright landscapes as iron age cemetery settings.)
 
In a press release, Paula Ware, managing director at MAP, said the chariot is the 26th to have been excavated in Britain. Melanie Giles FSA (author of A Forged Glamour: Landscape, Identity and Material Culture in the Iron Age) told me that only one other British chariot is known to have been accompanied by two horses. It was excavated exactly two centuries ago in Arras, East Yorkshire, at a site known as the King’s Barrow. The illustration above shows Aaron Watson’s vision of a ceremony at a (horseless) chariot burial for a woman, whose remains were excavated at Wetwang Slack in 2001 (courtesy Melanie Giles).
 
Peter Halkon FSA, who with his colleague at Hull University Malcolm Lillie FSA is academic consultant to the Polkington project, told me that the grave had been damaged by medieval ploughing, which had apparently taken out one of the cart’s wheels and part of the human remains. The individual’s gender is not yet known.
 
Halkon’s photo (left, courtesy MAP) shows Mark Stephens, MAP’s Site Director (in white hat), with visitors John Dent FSA (on left) and Sheelagh Stead and Ian Stead FSA, all of whom have made significant contributions to the understanding of these curious iron age burials in Yorkshire. Writing about the find in the Independent, David Keys quotes Giles and Halkon.

And if you’re thinking about the Grand National, a horse called Wounded Warrior may seem an appropriate punt. This is not a tip.
 

 

Roy Martin Haines FSA, historian, died in February.
 
John Wilkins FSA, Classical historian and archaeologist of Italy, died in March.
 
Appreciations appear in Fellows Remembered below. The section also contains a further notice on the late Geoffrey Wainwright FSA.
 
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Theresa May, Britain’s Prime Minister, informed the European Council on 29 March that the UK will leave the European Union, turning the Referendum vote in 2016 into an all but irreversible action. The Heritage Alliance has produced Brexit and Heritage Briefing, proposing that it is important to think now about the implications of leaving the EU. ‘Time is needed,’ it says, ‘to develop and put in place measures that replace and improve on those resulting from EU funding and regulation [which will be lost]. This needs to be planned for.’
 
CHERISH, led by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) with Irish and Welsh partners, is a good example of how EU money is contributing to UK heritage. Officially launched on 23 March, during its five years the project will receive €4.1 million. It plans to investigate the coastal risks of climate change, focusing on Pembrokeshire, Cardigan Bay and the Llŷn Peninsula, and sites in south and east Ireland. The project will fund new archaeological excavations, records of environmental change, marine mapping and landscape modelling, and analyse coastal and island archaeology and maritime heritage sites affected by coastal erosion, storms and rising sea levels. On 30 March they announced a scheme to capture laser maps of coastal locations in the Irish Sea. The data will complement other work by the CHERISH Survey Team, said Toby Driver FSA, Senior Investigator at RCAHMW, in a press release, including 3D photogrammetry from aerial photography and drone surveys, and ground-based laser scanning and archaeological survey using differential GPS. ‘This is an exciting new project,’ added Christopher Catling FSA, Secretary of RCAHMW, ‘bringing a strong partnership of archaeologists, geoscientists and maritime specialists to bear on the significant challenges posted by climate change.’

Bernard Nurse FSA has compiled London: Prints & Drawings before 1800, featuring over a hundred images from the Gough collection in the Bodleian Libraries, many published for the first time. The original items, Nurse tells Salon, are from the fine collection on British topography which belonged to the Society's former Director, Richard Gough FSA. At his death in 1809, the collection went to the Bodleian Library after the British Museum had turned it down. This volume covers the Greater London area, and Nurse is now working on the rest of the country for another one. ‘However,’ he adds, ‘you should warn any members of the London Topographical Society who might be interested not to purchase it as they will receive a copy with this year's subscription.’

On 20 March François Hollande, President of France, and Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Vice Premier Minister of the Emirates, launched a new cultural heritage fund at the Louvre. The International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas has a target of $100 million. In the UK, the Department for Culture Media and the British Council launched a £30 million fund with similar goals last year.

On 22 March at 3.15 in the afternoon, for those able to receive Cardiff programmes, Dr Cyril Fox FSA spoke on the radio on the subject of Saxon Forts, Norman Castles, Homestead Moats. The broadcast was over 90 years ago, so it’s unlikely you heard him, even though the talk was for school children. In Sheffield the following year (1927) listeners might have heard Mr F A Holmes, Chairman of the Buxton Archaeological Society, talk about Beautiful Dovedale-I, The Upper Dove and Beresford Dale. Heraldry was a popular topic, with talks by Archibald G B Russell FSA and Mrs Richard Berry (accompanied by an orchestra relayed from the Bungalow Café, Southampton) among others. Stanley Casson FSA read his talk on Digging up Old Stamboul. Iorwerth Peate FSA, V E Nash-Williams FSA, Bernard Ashmole, W P Yetts and Louis Leakey FSA, and of course Gordon Childe FSA – among many others – can also be found in Radio Times listings. An online archive has now been augmented with issues from the 1920s. The picture shows David Attenborough FSA on a front cover from 1956.
 
The only other Fellows to be honoured with a Radio Times cover photo are, I think, Michael Wood FSA in the 1980s, and Lucy Worsley FSA in 2013. ‘Sometimes it seems’, says a profile in the Observer on 2 April, ‘as though Lucy Worsley is single-handedly keeping BBC4 in business.’ As well as that, writes Sarah Hughes, she presented a series on the six wives of Henry VIII on BBC1 late last year, her book on Jane Austen comes out in May (Jane Austen at Home: A Biography) with a TV series due later in the year, her second historical novel for children (My Name is Victoria) was published in March to strong reviews, and it has been announced that she is to head a major two-part series on the history of opera for BBC2. And she has a job, joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. ‘When it comes to history I am shameless,’ Worsley has said. ‘I will do whatever it takes to get people involved.’
 
David Butterfield, Director of Studies in Classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge, has been helping people with tattoos written in Latin, reports the Times (28 March), ahead of the full story in Spectator Life magazine. Butterfield had supplied a translation service, but had decided to stop as he became disillusioned with the practice. ‘Asked whether he had to be diplomatic when telling people about indelible errors,’ reported the Times, Butterfield replied, ‘If a woman has got a self-referential tattoo describing her in the gender of a man, that needs raising, however gently the news is passed on.’ ‘It was never worthwhile beating unduly about the bush,’ he added.
 
Human footprints in Norfolk studied by Fellows feature in a new exhibition in Room 3 at the British Museum, along with an Iraqi artist’s sketchbook and clips from a film about the Caribbean. The book, Ali’s Boat, was made by Sadik Kwaish Alfraji in 2014, inspired by an incident with his 11-year-old nephew on a visit to Iraq from the Netherlands, where he now lives: Ali gave him a drawing, saying, ‘I wish this boat takes me to you.’ Excerpts from a documentary film, One World in Relation, express the impacts of slavery, colonialism and racism on Caribbean culture. Directed by Manthia Diawara, the film follows Édouard Glissant, a Martinique poet and philosopher who finds hope in emerging cultural ‘multiplicity’. In the centre of the room is a wooden box – half immigration gate, half beach shower-room – onto the floor of which is projected images of footprints in the hardened million-year-old mud of Happisburgh beach. The prints were found after storms in 2013, close to the site of continuing excavations of an early hominin site, and described by a team of scientists including Nick Ashton FSA and Chris Stringer FSA. Moving Stories: Three Journeys, an Asahi Shimbun Display, is open until 30 April.
 
BBC Four has commissioned a third series of Detectorists, a gentle and popular comedy about metal-detector users in Suffolk. Six episodes will be filmed in the summer, for broadcast later this year.

‘Champagne will flow,’ says the invitation to the launch of a new book by Richard Wendorf FSA. Wendorf, who is Director of the American Museum in Britain, Bath, and an art historian and former librarian, will be hosting a reception for Fellows at the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, London on 9 May at 6–8 pm. Copies of his Growing Up Bookish: An Anglo-American Memoir can be purchased and inscribed. RSVP (acceptances only, please identify yourself as a Fellow when responding) to director@americanmuseum.org. The American Museum in Britain’s current temporary exhibition is 1920s Jazz Age: Fashion & Photographs (until 29 October). It features over 100 fashion objects, including flapper dresses, evening capes, lame coats, couture, and ready-to-wear garments, and candid celebrity portraits by James Abbe.
 
New at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (until 23 September) is an installation of figurative sculpture by Marc Quinn. Drawn from Life features ten fragmentary-looking fibreglass works based on casts, made with Quinn’s partner, Jenny Bastet, who is a dancer. ‘The completion of our seven-year restoration has enabled us to undertake new and exciting projects and collaborations,’ said Bruce Boucher FSA, the museum’s Director. ‘Soane wanted his astonishing collection to inspire, and its breadth and depth mean that it appeals as much to a contemporary artist, as an architectural historian or the curious first-time visitor.’ Marc Quinn will be the first of a series of ‘contemporary creatives invited to engage with this remarkable collection in their own very personal way.’ Quinn is well-known to Londoners for his popular Alison Lapper Pregnant, which occupied the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2006.

Seb Choudhury reported on objections to the proposed Stonehenge road tunnel in Inside Out West on BBC TV on 31 March. He looked at artefacts in the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes, from bronze age graves close to Stonehenge, and even closer to the proposed western tunnel portal. Farmer Rachel Hosier drove him out to Bush Barrow, where she describes her horror at the planned road. ‘It’s a total catastrophe’, said David Jacques FSA of the road, showing Choudhury Blick Mead, site of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer excavation. The dig is close to the present A303, where it passes in a busy dual carriageway.
 
Paul Holden FSA has edited New Research on Cornish Architecture: Celebrating Pevsner, the proceedings of a conference marking a newly revised county guide, first published in 1950. Nikolaus Pevsner FSA opened his Buildings of England series guide with the words, ‘Cornwall possesses little of the highest aesthetic quality though much that is lovable and much that is moving.’ The conference championed the Cornish built environment, proving that Cornwall has a rich and varied architectural heritage and examples of some of the most important building types in the country. Contributors include John Allan FSA, Peter Beacham FSA, Paul Holden FSA, Jo Mattingly FSA and Alex Woodcock FSA.
 
On 8 April the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, in the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, re-opens after a six-month redevelopment. The Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust has launched a ten-year plan to raise £15 million and transform the ten museums and 36 scheduled monuments in its care.
 
As reported by the Sun, it sounded like a possible April Fools' story. ‘Britain’s last known woolly mammoths’, said the paper, ‘died about 14,000 years ago after they fell into a hole left by melting bocks of ice.’ But now archaeologists had found a ‘huge horn’ in Essex. The object was in fact a 2m-long mammoth tusk, found on 30 March by volunteers with the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN) off Mersea Island, in muddy gravel during unusually low tides. ‘We want to get suitable community groups right the way down the British coast,’ Gustav Milne FSA told the Times. ‘We want them all around the country looking out for coastal heritage assets — they are coastal history before it’s washed away.’ A 3D model of the find, which was left in situ, can be seen on the CITiZAN website.
 
As I noted in the last Salon, several Fellows have expressed public concern over the future of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and its records and equipment. On 21 March Stephen Clarke, Trustee, United Kingdom Building Preservation Trust, wrote to the Times to say that he had approached the foundry owner ‘to explore the possibility of acquiring the business and assets at market value, thus saving them for the nation. All the archives, fixtures and fittings would be retained in their original place.’ Comparing his proposal to the recent saving of Middleport Pottery, Stoke, the oldest continuously working china factory in the UK, he said that opportunities to retain original businesses in their heritage buildings for the nation are ‘exceedingly rare’. • The foundry, which closes in May, cast its last bell for the Museum of London. It will join a bell it made in 1573 already in the museum’s collections. The foundry records are being given to the London Metropolitan Archives.

A spectacular carved wooden ship’s rudder (right), raised from the Swash Channel outside Poole Harbour, Dorset, in 2013, has gone on display in Poole Museum. At the opening of a new gallery on 23 March the source wreck’s identity was announced as a Dutch merchant vessel named The Fame, which sank in a storm in 1631. Timbers and a cannon were raised by a Dutch dredger in 1990, and survey by Bournemouth University archaeologists in 2004 found the remains of an impressive late 16th- or early 17th-century ship. Nothing from the site, however, labelled the Swash Channel Wreck, offered any clues as to the ship’s name. Ian Friel FSA has now established that she was the Fame of Hoorn, en route to the West Indies. ‘The showcasing of this rudder,’ said Bournemouth University marine archaeologist Dave Parham FSA in a press release, ‘is a chance to give this project to the public so that they can engage with it too.’
 
The then Department of Urban Archaeology of the Museum of London ran four excavations between 1974 and 1981 around the north end of London Bridge: at Swan Lane and Seal House, upstream of the present bridge and its Medieval and Roman predecessors, and at New Fresh Wharf and Billingsgate Lorry Park, downstream of the crossing. All four sites were in the reclamation zone of the Thames’ north bank. Roman and late Anglo-Saxon waterfronts have been published. The City of London Archaeological Trust (CoLAT) is now working on the later waterfronts (1100–1666); excavation recovered thousands of artefacts and several hundred kilos of pottery as well as riverside structures. The project is directed by John Schofield FSA, who writes to draw attention to an online archive which includes everything from magazine features to detailed context descriptions. CoLAT has also produced a new index to archaeological monographs produced by a variety of outfits working in the London area. • CoLAT is advertising the availability of its grants for archaeological work of all kinds (‘except bailing out developers’) in the City of London or connected places. Grants are available for one year only from April 2018; the closing date for applications is 22 September 2017, and the Trust meets to decide the grants in December. Details online. Photo shows the 13th/14th-century Billingsgate trumpet, found in 1984 (Andy Chopping/MOLA).
 
An inscribed Roman lead ingot found at a weekend metal-detecting rally near Wells, Somerset was offered for sale by Bonhams, London last year. Bidding for the ingot, estimated to realise £40–60,000, stopped at £38,000, below the reserve price. The piece was finally sold by Hansons Auctioneers, Etwall, Derbyshire on 22 March, at a hammer price of £25,000. The inscription names Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. who ruled as co-emperors from AD 161 until the death of Verus in AD 169. Sale details noted that the ingot was recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme as SOM-23F798. The auctioneer’s photo (right half, the left half being from the PAS record) suggests something strong might have been used to clean the object.
 
Some University of Bristol students have launched a petition to remove the Wills name from the Wills Memorial Building, on the grounds that it commemorates a tobacco business built on slavery. In 1908, writes Dan Glaister in the Observer (2 April), Henry Wills promised £100,000 to fund a university, and became its first chancellor; his sons opened the grand neo-Gothic building in 1925. ‘It’s good that we have these little debates,’ comments Mark Horton FSA, ‘there’s nothing students like better than a political controversy, but the slavery connection isn’t that strong with Wills. The truth is that we may never know.’ However, Horton adds, the city should do more to recognise its history. In West Africa and the Caribbean, heritage sites acknowledge slavery. But in Bristol, ‘the organising fulcrum of this horrifying trade, there is nothing, and yet around us, from 1700 to 1806, around 565,000 Africans were ripped out of their homeland and put on ships funded by Bristol merchants. Some 450,000 survived.’ Photo Wikipedia.

Deborah Howard FSA has co-curated Madonnas and Miracles (open until 4 June) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, with Mary Laven and Maya Corry. Victoria Avery FSA was the Museum’s internal curator. The exhibition, says the Fitzwilliam, exposes a hidden world of religious devotion in the Italian Renaissance home. Jewellery, ceramics, books, sculptures and paintings invite us into a domestic sphere charged with spiritual significance. Materials from across the Italian peninsula juxtapose fine works of art with humble and everyday artefacts. Transforming our understanding of a period that is often cast as intensely worldly and secular, the exhibition also offers a new appreciation of the relationship between the material and the divine. Howard, Laven and Corry have edited a catalogue.

Roy Martin Haines FSA died on 1 February, aged 92. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in March 1967, a month short of 50 years ago. He was, writes F Donald Logan FSA, ‘a scholar whom I greatly admired.’
 
According to his Wikipedia entry, Roy Martin Haines, after school in Otford and Bromsgrove, received a Diploma in Education at St Chad's College, University of Durham. He returned to St Michael's Preparatory School, Otford as Master (1947–54). Beyond the standard curriculum, be taught heraldry, architecture and medieval warfare (demonstrating motte-and-bailey castles with sand and matchsticks). He was later a history master at Westminster School, and Assistant Editor of the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire.
 
He moved to Canada in 1966, first to Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, and then in 1967 to Dalhousie University, where he later became Professor of Medieval History. In 1978–80, as Canada Council Killam Senior Research Scholar, he researched in the Vatican Archives.
 
His books included Ecclesia Anglicana: Studies in the English Church of the Later Middle Ages (1989), Death of a King: An Account of the Supposed Escape and Afterlife of Edward of Caernarvon, formerly Edward II, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine (2002), and Archbishop Simon Mepham, 1328–1333: A Boy Amongst Men (2012).
 
Haines obtained a DPhil at Worcester College, Oxford in 1959 (published in 1965 as The Administration of the Diocese of Worcester in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century). In 1987–88 he was Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge and was appointed a Life Member of the College in 1990. In 2010 the University of Oxford awarded him a DLitt on the strength of his publications. He returned to the UK after retiring.
 
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John Wilkins FSA died on 8 March, aged 81. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in May 1991. He was Director of Accordia, from whose biography I have edited the following:
 
John Wilkins was a classical scholar at Kings College, Cambridge, studying Mycenaean civilisation with John Chadwick. He was a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome, where he went with plans to work with Massimo Pallotino on the Etruscan civilisation. However John Ward-Perkins FSA, then Director of the School, introduced him to the School's excavation at Veii, and thereafter he remained an inter-disciplinary archaeologist and classical historian.
 
In 1988, when he was Head of the Department of Mediterranean Studies at Queen Mary and Westfield College (now Queen Mary University of London), he founded the Accordia Research Institute. The Institute (now based at UCL Institute of Archaeology and the Institute of Classical Studies) promotes research into all aspects of early Italy.
 
Wilkins’ principal research interest was the development of pre-Roman Italy, with a particular interest in early Italy’s sociolinguistic landscape. He was co-Director (with Ruth Whitehouse FSA) of the Botromagno excavation, and (with Armando de Guio and Whitehouse) of the Alto-Medio Polesine – Basso Veronese field survey. Most recently, based at UCL Institute of Archaeology, he was co-Director (again with Ruth Whitehouse) of two successive research projects: Developmental Literacy and the Establishment of Regional and State Identity in early Italy; and Etruscan Literacy in its Social Context, 8th–5th centuries BC.
 
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Geoff Wainwright FSA, who died in March, was a stalwart Fellow and a leading archaeologist of his time. It is no surprise that several archaeologists have written with fond memories of a man who made an era of his long working life.
 
• Andrew Pike FSA:
‘Both before and during his presidency of the Society, I had met Geoff a number of times. But it was when I became involved with the Welsh Antiquaries (though I live just in England, Wales is much closer to south Shropshire than London!) that I got to know him well. He came to many of our study weekends, lunches and social events. In 2014 I rashly offered to organise our autumn study weekend, based in and around Ludlow. In the days leading up to the weekend, I was getting anxious that the occasion would meet the approval of so many distinguished Fellows. Geoff was really supportive and helpful throughout and, when we arrived at Mitchells Fold – one of Shropshire's two stone circles – he gave us an impromptu lecture and description of the site. In the week after the meeting, I received a letter from Geoff thanking me for organising “such an enjoyable weekend” and congratulating me on choosing a wide range of interesting sites. I immediately felt that all the hard work in arranging the event had been so worthwhile. And I shall miss those evenings and the chats in the bar, which often continued well into the small hours!’
 
• Kevin Brown FSA:
‘Like many, I encountered Geoff at several stages during my career: as an applicant for a post in the Central Excavation Unit (CEU), when he was its head; at conferences, where he spoke authoritatively about his work and the new excavation techniques he was employing; as a new regional director at English Heritage’s south-west office; in his role as Chief Archaeologist; and latterly as one of the many Stonehenge project directors. As a young archaeologist his formidable reputation as an excavator made him intimidating. Many years later when I joined the then English Heritage, encounters with Geoff always left me suspecting that I had been an unwitting player in a game of chess: I the pawn and he the bishop; all manoeuvres conducted with good humour. By the time I took on Stonehenge (2003), Geoff had already retired as Chief Archaeologist but he was always present whenever there was a significant moment in the life of the project. Still keen to see a solution, but perhaps more sceptical about what was being proposed at that time, his wry observations on the politics of such an intractable project were kindly intended as gentle warnings to the innocent abroad.
 
‘Tim Darvill wrote of Geoff's mischievousness in his Guardian obituary and I saw this at first hand. The discovery of an inscribed stone during Christopher Morris' excavations at Tintagel caused great media excitement, not least because the name ARTOGNOV it bore set off resonances of a certain medieval folk-hero. Keen not to sensationalise the find, the excavators and regional team were, nevertheless, encouraged to hold a “media event” at the site, with the Chief Archaeologist as one of the spokespersons. Before the press arrived, on-site briefings of all involved stressed the dangers of speculating about the identity of the person behind the name, and common agreement on an appropriate response to the inevitable question was reached. Whilst I and the excavators stood rigidly to the line that more analysis was needed before a definitive reading of the inscription could be given, on the other side of the site Geoff, beaming broadly, was reported as declaring that Arthur might well be the person named on the stone. He always had an eye for a good story in his keenness to popularise archaeology. Of course what was reported and what was said were subtlety different: “ARTOGNOV might possibly be the name of someone called Arthur” was what I heard.
 
‘It's a sad loss.’
 
• Deborah Hodges:
‘I was greatly saddened to hear of the death of Geoff Wainwright. I cannot claim to have known him well, but to a young aspiring archaeologist he was an inspiration, with his combination of great skills and knowledge of the ancient landscape, whilst I well recall his sense of fun. He also appeared quite frequently in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton where I was a student.
 
‘The photograph of the Balksbury team c 1973 brings back some interesting memories as I am sure it does for others, not just of the excavations which Geoff masterminded on this impressive site, but the great sense of bonhomie which existed among the group. I am seated precariously on the roof of the caravan and clearly enjoying the moment.’
 
• Jeremy Knight FSA:
‘Geoff and I were two of the three founding students of the Department of Archaeology at Cardiff University. Previously Victor Nash Williams FSA held the joint posts of lecturer at the University and Keeper of Archaeology in the National Museum. Lectures were held in a small room in the museum. On his untimely death in December 1955, the end of our first term, the separate roles were taken over by his assistants, Leslie Alcock FSA and Hubert Savory FSA. Later, Geoff and I shared an office in the Inspectorate offices in London. After I returned to Wales, Geoff was someone I frequently ran into, in Cardiff, the Antiquaries, Soho pubs and on the train to west Wales.
 
‘Latterly, Geoff and Judith were regular attenders at the autumn weekends held in different parts of Wales by the Welsh Fellows, but if an excursion clashed with a Welsh Rugby international, Geoff would quietly disappear to the hotel television room. It was fitting that at his funeral, displayed among the flowers and wreaths was a Welsh Rugby shirt signed by the entire current international team (though I'm not sure that Geoff would have been happy with their form this season).
 
‘Above all Geoff, like many Welsh people, combined a deep love of his native county – Pembrokeshire – with a strong belief in international values.’
 
• Francis Pryor FSA:
‘Without Geoff we wouldn’t have discovered Flag Fen or excavated Etton, and Must Farm would still be unknown. Geoff got us the money (from some English Heritage fund) to do the initial dyke survey, which revealed Flag Fen, in November 1982. He then funded more survey and the first seasons at Flag Fen. I know for a fact that he did this on his own initiative. He had also been an enthusiastic supporter of our earlier work at Maxey and Etton, where he helped us get additional research funding from the British Museum (thanks to Ian Longworth FSA).
 
‘He was also a keen advocate of the early use of micro-computers and slipped us £10,000, at the end of a financial year in the mid-80s, to buy a state-of-the-art Cromemco hard-drive computer, for which we had to write our own relational database, to house all the Etton records. I think Etton was the first completely digital rescue excavation. Sadly, the hard drive eventually crashed, but we had everything backed-up on 5 1/4-inch floppy disks! Geoff was a huge supporter of our work with digital recording and I know it affected his early thoughts on what was later to appear as the MAP2 project management scheme. A very great man and a good friend. Maisie [Taylor FSA] and I have already drunk to his memory – several times.’
 
• Stewart Bryant FSA, and on behalf of Jan Wills FSA, Bob Croft FSA and Ken Smith FSA, all of them former Chairs or Secretaries of the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers (ALGAO):
 
‘Geoff Wainwright was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in English archaeology since the Second World War. He was also probably the most influential single figure in terms of the development of local government archaeology between 1980 and 2000.
 
‘He saw from the early 1980s that strategically the national/local partnership between English Heritage and local authorities was a key to making the important changes to the sector he thought were necessary. The most significant of these was the move away from the state funding of archaeological investigation, and its replacement by developer funding – eventually to many times the level of state funding – following the publication of PPG 16 in 1990, which he also had a key role in producing. Geoff saw that good local government planning advice was a key ingredient to the success of PPG 16, and provided the means for this to happen though financial support for new posts within local government archaeology services.
 
‘In addition, he was the mastermind behind numerous strategic projects undertaken in partnership with local authorities that have had lasting benefits to the sector, including the Monuments Protection Programme (MPP) to increase the numbers of statutory protected Scheduled Monuments, Urban Archaeology Databases and Extensive Urban Surveys, and crucially, the creation of a national network of local Sites and Monuments Projects (SMRs, now called HERs). Importantly, he also made this happen through the financial support for new SMR posts.
 
‘The publication of another key Wainwright strategic project, the Monuments at Risk Survey (MARS) in 1995, led to the next phase of local authority partnership through the programme of financial support for new local authority countryside advisor posts (HECAs) to better manage archaeological remains in the countryside. At the same time Geoff provided important support for the Association of County Archaeological Officers (ACAO), the national body for local authority services which then developed further when ALGAO was created in 1996, and has since became a major source of funding for ALGAO projects over the past 15 or so years. As Chairs of ALGAO we all attended some very memorable meetings with Geoff in Fortress House, Savile Row.
 
‘Without Geoff’s influence, local government archaeology (HERs, agri-environment advice and planning advice) and much of what is now taking place in the commercial sector of archaeological contractors and consultants, would not be happening. The archaeological profession, and local government in particular, owes him a considerable debt of gratitude.’

• Peter Fowler FSA:
‘Exploiting my acquaintance with Geoff, in 1966 I persuaded him to agree to record a piece from Durrington Walls for a new BBC radio series The Changing Past. Roy Hayward, the producer, and I arrived, tape recorder and mike in hand, at what were visually truly remarkable excavations. I tried to put over some of this sense of wonder, but Geoff wouldn’t play: he said, tersely, as much as he thought was needed and not a word more. He told me later that his job as an Inspector was to excavate the site as well as possible, full stop. It took him some time to accommodate that narrow, professional view (which I shared for a time) with the wider demands of public archaeology in the later 20th century.
 
‘In 1975 I went with, inter alia, the late Andrew Saunders FSA, then Chief Inspector and Geoff’s boss, to an epoch-making archaeological conference at Dallas, Texas. There for the first time we heard about “public archaeology”, “the conservation ethic” and how to go about creating a professional body of archaeologists. Andrew opined before leaving that “Well, there’s nothing new there – we’ve been doing that for years.” However, many years later Geoff confided to me, in a rare moment of candour, that a note I had written about the conference for Antiquity had been a revelation to him. I muse sometimes that perhaps it planted one of the seeds from which sprang PPG 16.
 
‘Much more characteristic of our relationship was disagreement. Knowing, for example, that I had devoted much time during the 60, 70s and 80s to the Council for British Archaeology, Geoff once told me in a crowd at Burlington House, apparently not without some considerable pleasure, that he was proud of never having served on a CBA committee. Indeed, he held that body in contempt. Equally, he knew that I disagreed profoundly with what he was trying to do with the Society of Antiquaries. Yet such was the calibre of the man that, as President, he commissioned from me a painting to mark the Society’s 400th anniversary in 2007.
 
‘Despite our many differences, we sometimes found ourselves on the same side, and to good effect. One day in the mid 90s I guided the Prehistoric Society round Fyfield and Overton Downs, Wiltshire, including excavated sites of prehistoric, Roman and Medieval date. Geoff was in my audience. The following day he wrote to me on official notepaper. Impressive though the field archaeology was, he opined, what really impressed him was the size of my excavation backlog; and he hoped I would not be affronted if, given that the whole landscape was a single Scheduled Monument, he tentatively offered me financial support in tackling it. You bet I was not affronted: that single letter led to me resigning my Chair, a starting job for half a dozen of my recent graduates who formed my in-house post-ex team, a big contract for Wessex Archaeology and, five years later, Landscape Plotted and Pieced (published by the Society of Antiquaries, 2000).
 
‘I know Geoff was as influential in many other publications; and so I remember him, not just as “ruthless, demanding and unapologetic”, as an obituary described his Chairman-hero, Sir Jocelyn Stevens, but also as shrewd, discerning and supportive, with an aptitude for doing the right thing at the right time. I and many others owe you a lot, Geoff: thanks.’

In the last Salon, I noted that two late Fellows – Geoff Wanwright FSA and Ivor Noël Hume FSA – had been warned early in their lives that archaeology was no way to earn a living. Catherine Johns FSA writes to say that it was not unreasonable that young people were told this in the 1950s: she was told exactly the same thing by a great-uncle, when she was a student in Cardiff not long after Wainwright.
 
‘I don't think that the older people who warned us,’ she says, ‘were being deliberately discouraging or elitist: it was perfectly true that there were very few job opportunities. Treating archaeology as a specific academic discipline in itself, rather than as an adjunct to Classics, history, anthropology etc, was still quite new. Until the vast expansion of urban rescue archaeology arising from wartime destruction and the subsequent building boom of the 1960s, and the setting up of undergraduate archaeology courses in universities additional to Edinburgh and Cardiff, local museums were the main employers of those with archaeological skills, and the salaries were extremely low by the standards of the time for young graduates. The people who warned us, whether archaeologists themselves, like the formidable Dame Kathleen [Kenyon FSA], or ordinary middle-class observers like my great-uncle, who was a history teacher, had never encountered practising full-time archaeologists who were not from a wealthy and privileged background. They didn't know that things were changing.’
 

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