Twenty-five Years

Extract

The Council have asked me to speak to you about the history of this Institute over the past twenty-five years; and, since I myself regard it as a “success story”, I shall try to make it something rather more than a mere sequence of reminiscences. I want therefore to tell you how the Institute came to be founded in 1947. I want to go back and recollect some of our archaeological experiences in the very different world of the nineteen-fifties – to remind you about the Institute's expansion, after Michael Gough took over the Directorship from me in 1961 – and finally to say something about how things are going in the nineteen-seventies, under the direction of Dr. D. H. French – ably assisted, as you know, by his wife and other associates. But I also want to add something about what (to use a very hackneyed expression) one may call the “wind of change” in archaeology; I mean changes in the approach to, and even in the ultimate purpose of excavating, as they are now frequently explained to me by people younger than myself.

So, let me begin at the beginning and remind you that the foundation of our Institute was almost entirely due to the initiative of one man: the late Professor John Garstang, whom everyone remembers because, as Herodotus wrote the first history of the Greeks, Garstang wrote the first history – at least in this country – and also the first geography of the Hittite Empire.