John Ashdown-Hill FSA, historian, died in May.
 
An appreciation appears in Fellows Remembered below. The section also contains further notices on the late Vera Evison FSA, the late Iain Bain FSA and the late Alan Bell FSA.
 
Louie Kamookak, Inuit historian and teacher and a senior hunter of Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Canada, died on 22 March aged 58. He played a vital role in the discovery of the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. The fate of the ships lost in an expedition which left England in 1845 led by Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin had seemed an unsolvable mystery. As a child Kamookak heard stories of strange artefacts and people lost in the ice and mist, and spent his life collecting oral history and researching texts in attempts to trace the sites of the wrecks and Franklin’s grave.

Three archaeologists and their driver were caught up in an explosion on 2 June in the Benisar area in the eastern part of Kabul, Afghanistan. One of the archaeologists was killed when their car hit a landmine, and the driver and the two other pasengers were injured. They were said to be on their way to Logar Province. Large-scale international excavations have been taking place at Mes Aynak, Logar Province, under armed guard ahead of copper mining, but at the time of writing there was no reason to associate the dead and injured with that site. No further details were available.
 
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Ten new Fellows were elected on 31 May:
 
Josephine Atkinson (methods and materials of Western European painting)
 
Peter Bogucki (early farming societies in European pre-history, particularly Neolithic sites in Poland)
 
Judie English (landscape archaeology and history of Surrey)
 
Seren Griffiths (scientific dating of prehistoric archaeology)
 
Anne Haour (material expression of identity in West Africa)
 
Richard Madgwick (osteoarchaeology, feasting in the past)
 
Marc Meltonville (history of English Royal kitchens)
 
Charlene Murphy (plant domestication in India and the Roman world)
 
Charlotte Newman (public welfare institutions, archaeology curation)
 
Eliott Wragg (London’s nautical archaeology)
 
For details see Ballot Results. Further details can be seen in the Ballot Archive (Fellows only).
 
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Martin Jones FSA, retiring George Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Cambridge, has been honoured with a beer – not just a pint, but an entire brew. Cerealia, a 4.2% ABV Festbier, was created with Jones and some of his colleagues at Milton Brewery, and was launched at the Cambridge Beer Festival on 21 May. It is named for the Roman festival Cerealia in honour of the goddess of agriculture and fertility. Jones's career, says the university’s tribute, has been dedicated to the study of food in prehistory. Beer is known as a drink of barley and wheat, but he noted different traditions in China. Recognising this, the brewery employed the Chinese tradition of wu-gu, or Five Grains, to further add oats, a special type of rice and millet. Hops are sourced from Five Nations: the UK, United States, Slovenia, New Zealand and South Africa. The photo by Milton Brewery shows ‘the archaeological team behind Cerealia’.
 
More than 6,000 people enjoyed a birthday party in the sun for Charles, Prince of Wales (he will be 70 in November) at Buckingham Palace on 22 May, among them Mike Heyworth FSA, Ken Smith FSA, Kate Pretty FSA, Fiona Gale FSA and Cassie Bradshaw (Director, Chair, former Chair and Trustee of the Council for British Archaeology, and Young Archaeologist of the year 2017, respectively). The garden party was held by the Prince and Camilla, Duchess Of Cornwall, to honour the achievements of HRH’s patronages, military affiliations, the charities he supports and others involved in public service. The day also marked the first public engagement of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex since their wedding. The photo tweeted by Mike Heyworth shows him (on left), Cassie Bradshaw and Ken Smith.

The Burlington Magazine, edited since May last year by Michael Hall FSA, has a new front cover design. The June 2018 edition incudes an article by Tessa Murdoch FSA about a set of silver-gilt waiters made in 1698–99 by Benjamin Pyne and now divided between four collections; and a review by Peyton Skipwith FSA of Carrington’s Letters: Dora Carrington, Her Art, Her Loves, Her Friendships, edited by Anne Chisholm. At the time of his appointment, Hall said, ‘I greatly admire [the magazine’s] empirical, object-based outlook, which is bracingly based on facts rather than theory, and much enjoy its sharp and wide-ranging reviews. I’m looking forward to working with its distinguished trustees and highly experienced editorial and commercial team to enhance and develop its content, both in print and online, in a way that will reach out to new audiences while preserving the Burlington’s impressive traditions.’
 
Naturalists in the Field: Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century, the second in a series on the emergence of natural history, is edited by Arthur MacGregor FSA. Between the natural world and our encounter with it in literature, imagery and the museum, says the blurb, lie the choices of naturalists. ‘The factors that weigh at every stage are here dissected, analysed and set within a historical narrative that spans more than five centuries. During that era, every aspect evolved and changed, as engagement with nature moved from a speculative pursuit heavily influenced by classical scholarship to a systematic science, drawing on advanced theory and technology.’ The process of representing nature was fraught with constraint and compromise. Sir David Attenborough FSA contributes a foreword.
 
As part of the Government’s ‘trailblazer’ process, 50-odd organisations, led by Historic England, have got together as the Historic Environment Trailblazer. They have been designing new apprenticeships in archaeology, conservation and heritage management, which would be equivalent to A Level up to postgraduate degree levels They are now conducting a wider consultation to see standards are appropriate and fit for purpose, starting with Archaeological Specialist Level 7 which aims to lead to a Masters qualification in a variety of specialist areas such as osteoarchaeology, finds officer or aerial investigation. There is a consultation event on 6 June (details online), and an online survey which is now live. The consultation ends on 25 June.
 
Winchester’s Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Later Suburbs: Excavations 1971–1986, by Patrick Ottaway FSA and Ken Qualmann, is the sixth of a series of reports on excavations by Winchester Museums in the 1970s and 80s. It describes excavations undertaken in Winchester’s historic suburbs, which produced evidence for their character, development and buildings over some 1,600 years from the end of the Roman era to the 19th century. Included are specialist reports on human remains and iron coffin-fittings from a Medieval Jewish cemetery, and on an early 19th-century pipe kiln and important assemblage of clay pipes made by a well-documented local entrepreneur.


A small piece of oak from HMS Victory was displayed at the Chelsea Flower Show (22–26 May), on the Animal and Plant Health Agency's Action Oak stand. The wood had been removed in an earlier restoration project, and was chosen to symbolise the challenges faced by a historic ship. It shows 'the damage small, inconspicuous insects and pests can do to a piece of oak,’ said Arabella Roberts, Historic Ships Manager from the National Museum of the Royal Navy, in a release. ‘The National Museum’s conservators are developing new methods for understanding and reducing the impact these pests have on historic timbers.’ The stand won a gold medal in the Great Pavilion awards.
 
Is Elizabeth I due for a Richard III-style makeover? Helen Hackett and Karen Hearn FSA were due to give a talk about the Queen on 4 June, as part of UCL’s 2018 Festival of Culture. ‘In modern screen representations,’ they say, ‘the older Elizabeth is usually in a grotesque state of physical decay, with flaking white make-up, black teeth, and a garish orange wig. However, the visual and written evidence from the early 1590s is far richer and more complex than this.’ To consider this they look at portraits, literature and contemporary accounts: what was Elizabeth like at 60? On History Extra, Hearn quotes the secretary to Count Frederick of Wurttemberg and Mompelgard, who visited Elizabeth in 1592: ‘seeing that she was chosen Queen on the 16th of November, 1558, in the 33rd year of her age [he erroneously thinks she is 67], and has thus borne the heavy burthen of ruling a kingdom thirty-four years, she need not indeed – to judge both from her person and appearance – yield much to a young girl of sixteen. She has a very dignified, serious and royal look, and rules her kingdom with great discretion.’ Hearn calls an Isaac Oliver miniature watercolour of 1590–92 (right, photo V&A) ‘the grand image for our talk’.
 
Mary Beard FSA, Bettany Hughes FSA and Lucy Worsley FSA met in Richard Brooks’ Sunday Times Culture column on 3 June. ‘Can Lucy Worsley ever stop dressing up for the cameras?’ asked Brooks. ‘Tomorrow, the joint chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces presents a 90-minute documentary about the suffragettes on BBC1. And, of course, she puts on the clothes of the period to front the show, just as she has done in programmes such as Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (yes, those spouses of Henry VIII), Nights at the Opera, A Very British Romance, Dancing Cheek to Cheek et al. The trouble is that such antics distract from the subject matter. You don’t get Professor Mary Beard dressed as a vestal virgin for one of her shows on the Romans, even if she did put on her sparkly trainers for Civilisations. Nor will Bettany Hughes prance about in the garb of Cleopatra when she presents her next television series on Egypt and the Nile.’ Photo BBC.
 
Herbert R Broderick FSA has published Moses the Egyptian in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B.iv). The book analyses the iconography of Moses in a famous illuminated 11th-century manuscript known as the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch. A translation into Old English of the first six books of the Bible, the manuscript contains over 390 images, of which 127 depict Moses. Broderick proposes that the varied motifs, says the blurb, in particular the image of the horned Moses, have a Hellenistic Egyptian origin. He argues that the visual construct of Moses may have been based on a Late Antique, no longer extant, prototype influenced by works of Hellenistic Egyptian Jewish exegetes, who ascribed to Moses the characteristics of an Egyptian-Hellenistic king, military commander, priest, prophet, and scribe. These Jewish writings were utilized in turn by early Christian apologists such as Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea. Broderick’s analysis of this Moses imagery ranges widely across religious divides, art-historical religious themes, and classical and early Jewish and Christian sources.

Warwick Ball, former Director of the now defunct British Institute of Afghan Studies in Kabul, has launched a journal devoted to the country ‘where Near Eastern, Central Asian and South Asian studies overlap’. Afghanistan, sponsored by the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies in Boston, is published by Edinburgh University Press. The first issue, writes Norman Hammond FSA in the Times (2 June), features excavations at the Buddhist monastery of Qol-e-Tut near Kabul, Alexander the Great, Victorian Britain’s indirect rule as a bulwark for the Raj, and modern Afghan leaders’ conceptualisation of the state. The last academic journal devoted to Afghanistan was Afghan Studies (1976–79), of which Hammond was Founding Editor, and he will be on the editorial board of Afghanistan. Ball and Hammond are editing the second edition of The Archaeology of Afghanistan from Earliest Times to the Timurid Period, to appear in 2019.
 

John Ashdown-Hill FSA died on 18 May aged 69. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in February 2014. His name is closely linked to the discovery of Richard III’s grave in a Leicester car park, but he will be remembered more widely as a leading historian of the Yorkist dynasty and a writer of popular books.
 
On 22 March 2015 John Ashdown-Hill looked smart and elegant in a white suit as he sat beside Philippa Langley, listening to a eulogy in Leicester Cathedral on the occasion of Richard III's reinterment. Around him was a packed invited congregation, among them the Duke of Gloucester, Sophie, Countess of Wessex and the Duke of Norfolk, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Leicester, the University Chancellor, actors Benedict Cumberbatch (there to read a poem by Carol Ann Duffy) and Robert Lindsay, descendants of Richard III’s sister, historians, archaeologists, journalists and more. The coffin holding the King’s remains lay on trestles under a black pall, whose decorations included a depiction of Ashdown-Hill holding his book about Richard III. On top was a crown supplied by Ashdown-Hill. Inside was a rosary, given by Ashdown-Hill.
 
The eulogy, given by Gordon Campbell FSA, Fellow in Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester, was broadcast live on television. Towards the end, with the camera on Ashdown-Hill, he was seen to shake his head, look across to his companion and raise his eyes into the roof, sighing theatrically. The press, picking up on immediate negative comments on social media, would later run stories about the ‘rude historian’ peeved not to have been named in the speech. The reality was more complex. There would have been no reburial of a King of England, a unique event in modern times, without Philippa Langley and Ashdown-Hill. He had reason to tut-tut, though when communication between the many parties involved in the Richard III project failed, there was rarely a single cause.
 
Anyway, this was not Ashdown-Hill’s moment. That had come three years before, on the day Jo Appleby FSA had excavated the skeleton in September 2012. As the sun was going down and the then anonymous bones had been packed, Langley asked if she could cover them with Richard III’s standard. Richard Buckley FSA, in charge of the operation, gave his approval. The task fell to Ashdown-Hill. He wrapped the flag around the box and carried it to the archaeologists’ van. It would take years of scientific studies for the archaeologists to prove the remains to be the King’s. But Ashdown-Hill and Langley already knew. ‘He was absolutely thrilled,’ she said of the occasion on BBC Radio 4’s obituary programme Last Word (1 June).
 
Born in London, Ashdown-Hill read History and French at the University of East Anglia. He obtained an MA in Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex, and in 2004, also at Essex, he began a PhD on Sir John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who died at the Battle of Bosworth with his cousin, Richard III. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2014. He taught languages and classical civilisation, here and overseas, but remained a professionally independent historian (‘some would say maverick,’ says his Telegraph obituary, 26 May).
 
He was a founder-member of the Looking For Richard Project, assembled by Philippa Langley to track down the King’s grave. Langley was inspired by little more than a mystic hunch, but found that Ashdown-Hill already had his suspicions. He had rejected the common assumption that Richard III’s body had been dug up and cast into the river Soar during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In a quest to support a theory that remains found in Belgium were those of Margaret of York, Richard III’s sister, he had traced a living descendant of Richard Ill's mother in Canada; this offered the prospect of a DNA test if remains suspected to be Richard III’s were found.
 
With this and his support, Langley had the confidence to proceed, and the pair were eventually able to persuade Leicester University archaeologists to excavate near the cathedral. For the former, finding the King’s grave was the only goal. The latter believed this impossible and of minor concern, but the search necessitated first locating and mapping the lost Greyfriars Friary, of considerable interest to the history of Leicester.
 
The parties set out on an extraordinary project that caught the imagination of the world. In the event, both goals were achieved in spectacular style. Ashdown-Hill’s reaction in the Service of Reinterment was fuelled by a sense that he, Langley and the Richard III Society were not fully credited by professional scientists and archaeologists for their contributions. In fact, one of his enduring gifts may be a recognition by academia that they do not own a monopoly on valid questions about the past.
 
One of Ashdown-Hill’s most successful books was Eleanor the Secret Queen (2010), which argued that Eleanor Talbot was the first wife of Edward IV. The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of his DNA (2010), later re-issued with the subtitle, The Book that Inspired the Dig, was inevitably a best seller. Among a long list of other books are Royal Marriage Secrets: Consorts & Concubines, Bigamists & Bastards (2013), The Third Plantagenet: George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III's Brother and The Wars of the Roses (2015), The Mythology of Richard III (2016) and Cecily Neville: Mother of Richard III (2018). The Mythology of the 'Princes in the Tower' is due in July. A book on Elizabeth Woodville is expected to be published in 2019.
 
In a tribute from the Department of History at Essex University, Alison Rowlands FSA wrote, ‘John was a prolific author, a leading historian of the Yorkist dynasty, and a real gentleman, who combined a genuine gentleness of manner with an immense enthusiasm for the solving of historical mysteries.’ ‘With his death,’ she added, ‘we have lost not only a leading scholar of the House of York but also a longstanding friend of our Department of History. He will be greatly missed.’
 
He was also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and was awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to historical research and the exhumation and identification of Richard III. Among his many public, and very popular lectures was one he gave at the Society of Antiquaries in 2015 on the 'Princes in the Tower', and he helped with informal gallery talks in 2014.
 
Ashdown-Hill, says the Telegraph, was a ‘quiet, gentle and unassuming man, [and] a lover of wildlife. At home in Manningtree, Essex, he kept chickens rescued from battery farms, although being vegetarian he would only eat their eggs. He would often take himself to a nearby beach where he could process his thoughts while sitting on the sand and staring out to sea.’ He published The Poetry of John Ashdown-Hill this year.

The photo of Ashdown-Hill at the top, receiving his MBE at Buckingham Palace, is from his blog. The other photo (M Pitts) shows him on the day of Richard III’s reinterment, being interviewed for the Guardian by Maev Kennedy FSA.
 
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Catherine Hills FSA and Leslie Webster FSA have written a long obituary of Vera Evison FSA, who died in March, for the Guardian (1 June). Evison ‘expanded knowledge,’ they say, ‘of the crucial period in British history that saw the transition from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England, the fifth to seventh centuries AD. She did this by pioneering the introduction of continental methods to develop the systematic study of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries.’ ‘Her excavation at the large, richly furnished Buckland Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Dover (1951–53),’ they add, ‘marked a turning point in the recognition of the strong element of Frankish material culture in Kent.’
 
She was born in Lewisham, south-east London, the youngest of five children of Francis Evison, a cabinetmaker and woodwork teacher, and his wife Emily (nee Scott), a specialist dry cleaner and restorer of fine textiles and furs. She lived all her life in London.
 
‘She kept herself fit through tennis and swimming. Taped on the mirror in her office at Birkbeck was a large notice which informed her students that smoking was not allowed in the room, at a time when smoking was ubiquitous and allowed in most places. She never took the lift, and preferred walking to travelling by bus.
 
‘She respected people prepared to defend their position, and would be prepared to concede the point if robustly argued; but she had no time for those who did not.’ Her ‘stated aim when she was 95 years old was to reach 100, which she duly achieved.’
 
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Jack Davidson has written a substantial obituary of Iain Bain FSA, who died in April, for the Herald Scotland, headed, ‘athlete and art historian‘ (11 May). Bain was ‘an outstanding Scottish hammer thrower,’ writes Davidson, ‘who later enjoyed a successful career in publishing and was recognised internationally as a distinguished British printing historian.’
 
Bain was Scottish hammer champion in 1956, 57 and 59, and represented Scotland and Great Britain internationally. He set a British Junior record while a pupil at Fettes College, and twice won the British Junior title as well as the Scottish Junior title. At Oxford he won the British Universities’ title with a record throw, and in 1957 competed in the World University Games in Paris. ‘He was the youngest of a golden generation of Scottish hammer throwers of the era,’ says Davidson.
 
Leaving athletics, Bain moved to publishing and became a leading expert on both historical printing techniques and Thomas Bewick. He was Head of Publications at the Tate Gallery from 1972 till retirement in 1994.
 
His English studies at Oxford University were interrupted by National Service in the Seaforth Highlanders. He saw action during the Mau Mau troubles in Kenya while seconded to the Black Watch, and was later involved in the Suez crisis for which he was awarded a campaign medal.
 
He was, says Davidson, a ‘man of considerable personal charm and grace. He was genuinely interested in everyone he met and mixed well in all types of company.’

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Alan Bell FSA, who died in April, ‘Brought the London Library into the age of the computer,’ headlines a Telegraph obituary (1 Jun). He was ‘a dignified figure typically clad in a three-piece suit, and his preference was to communicate in an elegant hand or through the spoken word. But he showed enthusiasm for progress… He never batted an eyelid on a visit to The Daily Telegraph when a secretary in the obituaries department addressed him as “mate”, and remained neutral when members campaigned for the installation of a coffee room at the Library (though everyone assumed he was opposed).’
 
Born in Sunderland, Bell went to Ashville College, Harrogate, and Selwyn College, Cambridge. He worked at the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and the National Library of Scotland before becoming Librarian at Rhodes House, Oxford. He left the London Library in 2002.
 
He edited the works of ‘several neglected 19th-century authors’, says the Telegraph. These included Sir Leslie Stephen's Mausoleum Book, two works on the Scots judge and memoirist Lord Cockburn, and ‘the almost totally incomprehensible manuscripts of the critic George Saintsbury, which Bell described as “a challenge to paleographic ingenuity”.’ His own one full-length biography was of the ‘witty Anglican clergyman’, the Reverend Sydney Smith (1980). Learning that ‘his book was short on humour, Bell eventually published The Sayings of Sydney Smith’ (1993).
 

Above is the grave of John Evan Thomas FSA (1810–73), in Brompton Cemetery, London. More of a commemoration than a memorial, a plaque featuring Thomas in Wales is definitely worth a mention. Andrew Pike FSA writes:
 
‘In the square in the centre of Brecon, opposite the appropriately named Wellington Hotel, is a large bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington on a stone plinth. The inscription on it reads:
 
‘This statue, modelled from life by the late John Evan Thomas FSA, JP Deputy Lieutenant and High Sheriff of the County of Brecknock, was presented by him to his native town in the year 1856.
 
‘On the sides of the plinth are bronze panels depicting the Peninsula War and Waterloo, and Picton MDCCCXV and Wellington MDCCCLII.
 
‘Thomas was a prolific sculptor: two of his statues adorn the House of Lords. Though he had a studio in Pimlico, he spent much of time in his native Wales.’
 
Statue photo Aberdare Blog, grave Wikipedia/Stephencdickson.