World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Kathleen Kenyon
Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, was a leading British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She is best known for her excavations of Jericho in 1952–1958, has been called one of the most influential archaeologists of the 20th century, she was Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford from 1962 to 1973. Kathleen Kenyon was born in London, England, in 1906, she was the eldest daughter of Sir Frederic Kenyon, biblical scholar and director of the British Museum. Her grandfather was lawyer and Fellow of All Souls College, John Robert Kenyon, her great-great-grandfather was the politician and lawyer Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon, she grew up in Bloomsbury, London, in a house attached to the British Museum, with her mother, Amy Kenyon, sister Nora Kenyon. Known for being hard-headed and stubborn, Kathleen grew up as a tomboy, climbing trees and playing a variety of sports. Determined that she and her sister should be well educated, Kathleen's father encouraged wide reading and independent study.
In years Kenyon would remark that her father's position at the British Museum was helpful for her education. Kathleen was an excellent student, winning awards at school and excelling in history, she studied first at St Paul's Girls' School, where she was Head Girl, before winning an Exhibition to read History at Somerville College, Oxford. While at Oxford, Kenyon won a Blue for her college in hockey and became the first female president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society, she began a career in archaeology. Although working on several important sites across Europe, it was her excavations in Jericho in the 1950s that established her as one of the foremost archaeologists in the field. In 1962 Kenyon was made Principal of Oxford, she retired in 1973 to Erbistock and was appointed a DBE. Kenyon never married. From 1974, Kenyon was the Honorary Vice President of the Chester Archaeological Society. A career in archaeology was first suggested to Kathleen by Margery Fry, librarian at Somerville College.
After graduation Kenyon's first field experience was as a photographer for the pioneering excavations at Great Zimbabwe in 1929, led by Gertrude Caton-Thompson. Returning to England, Kenyon joined the archaeological couple Mortimer Wheeler and his wife Tessa Wheeler on their excavation of the Romano-British settlement of Verulamium, 20 miles north of London. Working there each summer between 1930 and 1935, Kenyon learned from Mortimer Wheeler the discipline of meticulously controlled and recorded stratigraphic excavation. Wheeler entrusted her with the direction of the excavation of the Roman theatre. In the years 1931 to 1934 Kenyon worked at Samaria under the administration of the British Mandate for Palestine, with John Crowfoot and Grace Crowfoot. There she cut a stratigraphic trench across the summit of the mound and down the northern and southern slopes, exposing the Iron II to the Roman period stratigraphic sequence of the site. In addition to providing crucial dating material for the Iron Age stratigraphy of Palestine, she obtained key stratified data for the study of Eastern terra sigilata ware.
In 1934 Kenyon was associated with the Wheelers in the foundation of the Institute of Archaeology of University College London. From 1936 to 1939 she carried out important excavations at the Jewry Wall in the city of Leicester; these were published in the Illustrated London News1937 with pioneering reconstruction drawings by the artist Alan Sorrell whom she had happened to notice sketching her dig. During the Second World War, Kenyon served as Divisional Commander of the Red Cross in Hammersmith, as Acting Director and Secretary of the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London. After the war, she excavated in Southwark, at The Wrekin and elsewhere in Britain, as well as at Sabratha, a Roman city in Libya; as a member of the Council of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, Kenyon was involved in the efforts to reopen the School after the hiatus of the Second World War. In January 1951 she travelled to the Transjordan and undertook excavations in the West Bank at Jericho on behalf of the BSAJ.
Initial finding were first viewed by the public in the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain 1951 with a reconstruction drawing by Alan Sorrell. Her work at Jericho, from 1952 until 1958, made her world-famous and established a lasting legacy in the archaeological methodology of the Levant. Ground-breaking discoveries concerning the Neolithic cultures of the Levant were made in this ancient settlement, her excavation of the Early Bronze Age walled city and the external cemeteries of the end of the Early Bronze Age, together with her analysis of the stratified pottery of these periods established her as the leading authority on that period. Kenyon focused her attention on the absence of certain Cypriot pottery at City IV, arguing for an older destruction date than that of her predecessors. Jericho was recognized as the oldest continuously occupied settlement in history because of her discoveries. At the same time she completed the publication of the excavations at Samaria, her volume, Samaria Sebaste III: The Objects, appeared in 1957.
Having completed her excavations at Jericho in 1958, Kenyon excavated in Jerusalem from 1961 to 1967, concentrating on the'City of David' to the immediate south of the Temple Mount. Although Kenyon had no doubt the sites she excavated were linked to the Old Testament narrative she drew attention to inconsistencies, concluding that Solomon's "stables" at Megiddo were impractical for holding horses, that Jericho fell long before Joshua's arrival. Ken
V. Gordon Childe
Vere Gordon Childe was an Australian archaeologist who specialized in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and the Institute of Archaeology and wrote twenty-six books during his career. An early proponent of culture-historical archaeology, he became the first exponent of Marxist archaeology in the Western world. Born in Sydney to a middle-class English migrant family, Childe studied classics at the University of Sydney before moving to England to study classical archaeology at the University of Oxford. There, he embraced the socialist movement and campaigned against the First World War, viewing it as a conflict waged by competing imperialists to the detriment of Europe's working class. Returning to Australia in 1917, he was prevented from working in academia because of his socialist activism, instead working for the Labor Party as the private secretary of the politician John Storey. Growing critical of Labor, he wrote an analysis of their policies and joined the far-left Industrial Workers of the World.
Emigrating to London in 1921, he became librarian of the Royal Anthropological Institute and journeyed across Europe to pursue his research into the continent's prehistory, publishing his findings in academic papers and books. In doing so he introduced the continental European concept of an archaeological culture—the idea that a recurring assemblage of artefacts demarcates a distinct cultural group—to the British archaeological community. From 1927 to 1946 he worked as the Abercromby Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, from 1947 to 1957 as the director of the Institute of Archaeology, London. During this period he oversaw the excavation of archaeological sites in Scotland and Northern Ireland, focusing on the society of Neolithic Orkney by excavating the settlement of Skara Brae and the chambered tombs of Maeshowe and Quoyness. In these decades he published prolifically, producing excavation reports, journal articles, books. With Stuart Piggott and Grahame Clark he co-founded The Prehistoric Society in 1934, becoming its first president.
Remaining a committed socialist, he embraced Marxism, and—rejecting culture-historical approaches—used Marxist ideas as an interpretative framework for archaeological data. He became a sympathiser with the Soviet Union and visited the country on several occasions, although he grew sceptical of Soviet foreign policy following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, his beliefs resulted in him being barred from entering the United States, despite being invited to lecture there. Upon retirement, he returned to Australia's Blue Mountains. One of the best-known and most cited archaeologists of the twentieth century, Childe became known as the "great synthesizer" for his work integrating regional research with a broader picture of Near Eastern and European prehistory, he was renowned for his emphasis on the role of revolutionary technological and economic developments in human society, such as the Neolithic Revolution and the Urban Revolution, reflecting the influence of Marxist ideas concerning societal development.
Although many of his interpretations have since been discredited, he remains respected among archaeologists. Childe was born on 14 April 1892 in Sydney, he was the only surviving child of the Reverend Stephen Henry Childe and Harriet Eliza, a middle-class couple of English descent. The son of an Anglican priest, Stephen Childe was ordained into the Church of England in 1867 after gaining a BA from the University of Cambridge. Becoming a teacher, in 1871 he married Mary Ellen Latchford, they moved to Australia in 1878. In 1886 Stephen married Harriet, an Englishwoman from a wealthy background who had moved to Australia as a child. Gordon Childe was raised alongside five half-siblings at his father's palatial country house, the Chalet Fontenelle, in the township of Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Reverend Stephen Childe worked as the minister for St. Thomas' Parish, but proved unpopular, arguing with his congregation and taking unscheduled holidays. A sickly child, Gordon Childe was educated at home for several years, before receiving a private-school education in North Sydney.
In 1907, he began attending Sydney Church of England Grammar School, gaining his Junior Matriculation in 1909 and Senior Matriculation in 1910. At school he studied ancient history, Greek, geometry and trigonometry, achieving good marks in all subjects, but he was bullied because of his physical appearance and unathletic physique. In July 1910 his mother died. Childe's relationship with his father was strained following his mother's death, they disagreed on religion and politics: the Reverend was a devout Christian and conservative while his son was an atheist and socialist. Childe studied for a degree in classics at the University of Sydney in 1911. At university, he became an active member of the debating society, at one point arguing in favour of the proposition that "socialism is desirable". Interested in socialism, he read the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as those of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, whose dialectics influenced Marxist theory. At university, he became a great friend of fellow undergraduate and future judge and politician Herbert Vere Evatt, with whom he remained in lifelong contact.
Ending his studies in 1913, Childe graduated the following year
London Mithraeum
The London Mithraeum known as the Temple of Mithras, Walbrook, is a Roman mithraeum, discovered in Walbrook, a street in the City of London, during a building's construction in 1954. The entire site was relocated to permit continued construction and this temple of the mystery god Mithras became the most famous 20th-century Roman discovery in London; the site was excavated by W. F. Grimes, director of the Museum of London, Audrey Williams in 1954; the temple hoped to have been an early Christian church, was built in the mid-3rd century and dedicated to Mithras or jointly to several deities popular among Roman soldiers. It was rededicated to Bacchus, in the early fourth century. Found within the temple, where they had been buried at the time of its rededication, were finely detailed third-century white marble likenesses of Minerva, Mercury the guide of the souls of the dead, the syncretic gods Mithras and Serapis, imported from Italy. There were several coarser locally-made clay figurines of Venus, combing her hair.
The artefacts recovered. Among the sculptures the archaeologists found was a head of Mithras himself, recognizable by his Phrygian cap; the base of the head is tapered to fit a torso, not preserved. Artefacts found in Walbrook in 1889 came from the Mithraeum, according to the archaeologist Ralph Merrifield, although this was not identified at the time. One was a marble relief, 0.53 m tall, of Mithras in the act of killing the astral bull, the Tauroctony, as central to Mithraism as the Crucifixion is to Christianity. On it Mithras is accompanied by the two small figures of the torch-bearing celestial twins of Light and Darkness and Cautopates, within the cosmic annual wheel of the zodiac. At the top left, outside the wheel, Sol–Helios ascends the heavens in his biga; the heads of two wind-gods and Zephyros, are in the bottom corners. It bears the inscription VLPIVS SILVANVS EMERITVS LEG II AVG VOTVM SOLVIT FACTVS ARAVSIONE which may be translated "Ulpius Silvanus, veteran soldier of the Second Augustan Legion, in fulfilment of a vow, makes this altar a vision" or "Ulpius Silvanus, veteran of the Second Legion Augusta, fulfilled his vow having become at Orange".
Nearby were buried heads of the Roman goddess Minerva and a finely detailed bearded head of Serapis, Jupiter-like in his features but securely recognizable by the grain-basket, the modius, upon his head, a token of resurrection. An inscription dateable AD 307–310 at the site PRO SALVTE D N CCCC ET NOB CAES DEO MITHRAE ET SOLI INVICTO AB ORIENTE AD OCCIDENTEM may be translated "For the Salvation of our lords the four emperors and the noble Caesar, to the god Mithras, the Invincible Sun from the east to the west". Parallel to the construction work between 2010 and 2014, Museum of London Archaeology led a team of over 50 archaeologists in further excavations of the site. Excavation recovered more than 14,000 items, including a large assembly of tools; the varied objects are thought to have been brought to the site in landfills and soils collected elsewhere and laid down to improve the marshy banks of the River Walbrook during the rebuilding of London after the Boudican revolt of AD 60 or 61. The local waterlogged soil conditions preserved organic material like leather shoes and a large assembly of wooden writing tablets of which over 400 were found.
The tablets held a layer of dark wax and messages were scratched into the wax with a stylus that revealed the paler wood underneath. The wax has perished. Among the messages is the oldest financial document from London, dated AD 57, two addresses from AD 62 and AD 70 containing the earliest mention of London; the Roman temple, when it was built, would have stood on the east bank of the now covered-over River Walbrook, a key freshwater source in Roman Londinium. Nearby, in its former streambed, a small square hammered lead sheet was found, on which an enemy of someone named Martia Martina had inscribed her name backwards and thrown the token into the stream, in a traditional Celtic way of reaching the gods that has preserved metal tokens in rivers throughout Celtic Europe, from the swords at La Tène to Roman times; the temple foundations are close to other important sites in the city of London including the historic London Stone, the Bank of England and London Wall. The original Mithraeum was built underground, recalling the cave of Mithras where the Mithraic epiphany took place.
The temple site was uncovered in September 1954 during excavation work for the construction of Bucklersbury House, a 14-storey modernist office block to house Legal & General. As a compromise between redesigning the new building and abandoning the archaeological site, the ruin was dismantled and moved 100 metres to Temple Court, Queen Victoria Street, where in 1962 the foundations were reassembled at street level for an open-air public display; the reconstruction drew criticism for the materials used. An interim report on the excavation included in W. F. Grimes, The Excavation of Roman and Mediaeval London was superseded by John Shepherd, The Temple of Mithras, Walbrook. In 2007 plans were drawn up to return the Mithraeum to its original location, following the demolition of Bucklersbury House and four other buildings in the block for the planned creation of a new Walbrook Square development
Slade School of Fine Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art is the art school of University College London and is based in London, United Kingdom. It is world-renowned and is ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution; the school is organised as a department of UCL's Faculty of Humanities. The school traces its roots back to 1868 when lawyer and philanthropist Felix Slade bequeathed funds to establish three Chairs in Fine Art, to be based at Oxford University, Cambridge University and University College London, where six studentships were endowed. Distinguished past teachers include Henry Tonks, Wilson Steer, Randolph Schwabe, William Coldstream, Andrew Forge, Lucian Freud, Phyllida Barlow, John Hilliard, Bruce McLean, Alfred Gerrard. Edward Allington was Professor of Fine Art and Head of Graduate Sculpture until his death in 2017. Two of its most important periods were before, after, the turn of the twentieth century, described by Henry Tonks as its two'crises of brilliance'; the first included the students William Orpen and Percy Wyndham Lewis.
R. W. Nevinson and Sir Stanley Spencer; the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art was opened in 1995. The centre provides opportunities for research into electronic media and fine art with the goal of contributing to debate on national and international levels; the Slade had been home to Malcolm Hughes's Computer and Experimental Department in the 1970s. In 1997 SCEMFA presented Collision, a public lecture series by artists and curators working with interactivity and digital works; this exhibition was followed by Spontaneous Reaction, a week-long seminar funded by the Arts Council, which took a critical look at interactivity with participants from a variety of disciplines, including psychology and computer science. Throughout 1998, SCEMFA collaborated with Channel 4 UK to organise Cached, a monthly event held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Funded by the Arts Council, this series investigated the conceptual and practical issues of producing art for the internet through a series of artists presentations.
The Slade art collection was started when the yearly prizes awarded to top students was combined with a collection scheme in 1897 and the Summer Composition Prize and the Figure and Head Painting Prizes began to be kept by the school. Works by students and staff of the Slade School of Fine Art form the basis of the UCL Art museum today. In a 2008 survey conducted by The Sunday Times the Slade recorded perfect scores; the faculty offers the following programs: Undergraduate Studies 3-year BFA in Fine Art 4-year BA in Fine ArtGraduate Studies 2-academic year MFA in Fine Art 2-calendar MA in Fine Art 1-term, 2-term, of 1-year Graduate Affiliate StudyResearch MPhil or PhD in Fine Art Full list see Category:Alumni of the Slade School of Art Pat Barker in Life Class and Toby's Room Gilbert Cannan in Mendel Barbary Deniston in The World My Wilderness Miranda Grey in The Collector Molly MacDonald in Monarch of the Glen David Thompson in Beyond This Horizon Imogen Hollins in Doctors Art of the United Kingdom Slade Website Slade Knowledge Base - extensive collection of studio teaching materials available online under Creative Commons Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art Timeline of key events
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, biofacts or ecofacts and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered a branch of the humanities. In North America archaeology is a sub-field of anthropology, while in Europe it is viewed as either a discipline in its own right or a sub-field of other disciplines. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, the study of fossil remains, it is important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world. Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.
The discipline involves surveying and analysis of data collected to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research, it draws upon anthropology, art history, ethnology, geology, literary history, semiology, textual criticism, information sciences, statistics, paleography, paleontology and paleobotany. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, has since become a discipline practiced across the world. Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Since its early development, various specific sub-disciplines of archaeology have developed, including maritime archaeology, feminist archaeology and archaeoastronomy, numerous different scientific techniques have been developed to aid archaeological investigation. Nonetheless, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, opposition to the excavation of human remains.
The science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with particular attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts, as well as historical sites. Antiquarianism focused on the empirical evidence that existed for the understanding of the past, encapsulated in the motto of the 18th-century antiquary, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "We speak from facts not theory". Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Flavio Biondo, an Italian Renaissance humanist historian, created a systematic guide to the ruins and topography of ancient Rome in the early 15th century, for which he has been called an early founder of archaeology. Antiquarians of the 16th century, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, drawing and interpreting the monuments that they encountered.
One of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England, he was ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings. He attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture and shield-shapes. Excavations were carried out by the Spanish military engineer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, both of, covered by ash during the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79; these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and human shapes, as well the unearthing of frescos, had a big impact throughout Europe. However, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard; the father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington. He undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798.
Cunnington made meticulous recordings of Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, the terms he used to categorize and describe them are still used by archaeologists today. One of the major achievements of 19th-century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy; the idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton and Charles Lyell. The application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites. In the third and fourth decades of the 19th-century, archaeologists like Jacques Boucher de Perthes and Christian Jürgensen Thomsen began to put the artifacts they had found in chronological order. A major figure in the development of archaeology into a rigorous science was the army officer and ethnologist, Augustus Pitt Rivers, who began excavations on his land in England in the 1880s, his approach was methodical by the standards of the time, he is regarded as the first scientific archaeologist.
He arranged his artifacts by type or "typologically, within types by date or "chronologically"
W. F. Grimes
William Francis Grimes was a Welsh archaeologist. He devoted his career to the prehistory of Wales, he was awarded a CBE in 1955. Grimes was born in Pembroke in Wales, his father was a draughtsman with the Pembroke docks board. He was educated at Pembroke county school and at Bedford Modern School after his father moved to Bedford to work as a draughtsman on airships. Grimes returned to Wales in 1923 to study Latin at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, where his lecturers included Mortimer Wheeler and Cyril Fox. Wheeler was Keeper and from 1923 Director of the National Museum of Wales. Grimes graduated with first-class honours in 1926. Wheeler moved to become Director of the London Museum in 1926, Cyril Fox replaced him as Director of the National Museum of Wales. Grimes became an assistant keeper of archaeology at the National Museum of Wales, working with the newly appointed keeper of archaeology, Victor Erle Nash-Williams, he received an MA from the University of Wales in 1930 for a dissertation on the Roman pottery from the 20th Legion's works at Holt.
He became interested in the prehistory of Wales, was involved in excavations at Pyle, Corston Beacon and Llanboidy. Grimes became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1934, he published a book on the prehistory of Wales in 1939, Guide to the Collection Illustrating the Prehistory of Wales, which won the Cambrian Archaeological Association's G. T. Clark prize in 1949; the book was republished as The Prehistory of Wales in 1951, a second edition followed in 1959. He met Audrey Williams in 1935, while preparing an exhibition in Swansea for the centenary of the Royal Institution of South Wales, they went on to work together at many excavations in Wales and elsewhere, were married. Grimes moved to Southampton in 1938 to become an assistant archaeology officer with the Ordnance Survey, was involved in the excavation of the newly discovered ship burial at Sutton Hoo the following year, he was seconded to the Ministry of Works in the Second World War, worked with Audrey Williams on quick surveys and excavations before the construction of new airfields and other military structures.
His discoveries included an Iron Age religious site at Heathrow. In 1945, he succeeded Mortimer Wheeler as director of the London Museum based in Lancaster House, he was involved in the programme to excavate Blitz sites in London. For this work, he received the freedom of the City of London in 1952. A highlight was his excavation of the London Mithraeum with Audrey Williams, discovered at a building site at Walbrook in 1954; the site was featured in the Illustrated London News illustrated with drawings by Alan Sorrell. The unexpected discovery of a bust of Mithras on the last scheduled day of the excavation generated considerable press and public interest, debates in Parliament and discussion in the Cabinet; the excavation was extended, delaying the construction. Although Bucklersbury House was built over the site, Grimes succeeded in salvaging many of its finds and features including marble statuary attesting to the wealth of its congregation; the temple was reconstructed nearby in the 1960s, but the work was not supervised by archaeologists and Grimes was dismissive of the result.
Grimes was appointed CBE in 1955. He continued his excavations in London after he succeeded V. Gordon Childe as director of the Institute of Archaeology and professor of archaeology at the University of London in 1956. While Grimes was its director, the Institute moved from St John's Lodge in Regent's Park to new premises at Gordon Square. Grimes remained interested in the archaeology of Wales, he received an honorary DLitt from the University of Wales in 1961, was president of the Cambrian Archaeological Association in 1963–64. He served on many commissions and committees with a variety of official bodies and archaeological societies and organisations, including the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Archaeological Institute, the Council for British Archaeology, he was a member of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales for 30 years from 1948 serving a period as chairman, joined the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England in 1964. He retired from both commissions in 1978.
Between 1975 and 1988 he served as the first chairman of the Dyfed Archaeological Trust. Grimes married a childhood friend Barbara Lilian Morgan in 1928, they had two children. They were divorced in 1959, he became the third husband of Audrey Williams, she bestowed on him the nickname Peter. They retired to her home in Brynmill in Swansea in 1973. After Audrey died in 1978, he was remarried to Mrs Molly Waverley Sholto Douglas in 1980, he suffered from Parkinson's disease in life, died at home in Swansea. He was cremated, his ashes were scattered at Pwlldu Bay on the Gower Peninsula, where the ashes of his second wife Audrey had been scattered; the Megalithic Monuments of Wales, Cardiff: National Museum of Wales, 1936. The Prehistory of Wales, Cardiff: National Museum of Wales, 1951. Grimes, W. F.. "The Council for British Archaeology: The First Decade". The Archaeological News Letter. Linden Publicity. 5: 139–145. "Excavations in the City of London", in Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S. Recent Archaeological Excavations in Britain, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956.
The Excavation of Roman and Mediaeval London, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Nautical Archaeology Society
