The teaching and research of archaeology in British universities has passed through a fifty-year golden age and now appears to be in full retreat. Student numbers are down, teaching faculty are being reduced, and with this research is living off the energy of years past. All this is happening as archaeology plays a larger role in society. Until the pandemic, cultural heritage tourism was rising massively as was a digital interest in the discipline. Salvage archaeology, though

Europeans see the USA through a metropolitan prism. Hollywood emphasizes its cities, its cars and its politics. But there is another America that needs to be championed: its great natural parks. For five weeks I have been beside a lake in the Adirondacks in the northern wilderness of upstate New York. Detach yourself from the daily news cycle, and this is a timeless paradise. But there is a more important point to make. Trails weave through these forests to lakes and ponds. A

Twenty years after my biography of the extraordinary archaeologist, Thomas Ashby, was published by the British School at Rome. Now it has become the basis for a sensitive and timely novella by Lucia and Maria Scerrato and published by Valtrend Editore, Naples. Here is an English version of my foreword: The memory of Thomas Ashby lives on with all who knew him: classically English, with a well-cut beard, always distinct and correct. When he went in the country he dressed in a

Fred Baker has passed far too young. It is hard to take in. He was always a youthful energy, creative and gifted. They were qualities enhanced by his cheerful modesty. Fred was a third culture kid who missed Oxbridge by smidgin and came to Sheffield’s bubbling archaeology department where he discovered exactly who he was. His English mien was no more than an affable appearance for his more formal Austrian heritage. In bearing he resembled an officer, large and broad-chested w