The Best Training Ground for Archaeologists: Francis Haverfield and the Invention of Romano-British Archaeology

by P. W. M. Freeman

Overview

To his contemporaries, Francis John Haverfield was the 'father of Romano-British studies', and his death on September 30th 1919 was greeted with widespread lamentation. In the decades immediately following his death, Haverfield's reputation survived largely undiminished, in fact his view of the Romanisation of Britain became so widely accepted that it held sway for almost a century, and is only now being re-examined by both positive and negative interpreters of his views. What is clear however, is that his immense contribution to the study of Roman Britain is worthy of attention.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781842172803
Publisher:	Oxbow Books
Publication date:	12/24/2007
Pages:	688
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.80(h) x 2.04(d)

Table of Contents

From Haverfield to Romanisation to Haverfield
Roman Britain in the mid-nineteenth century
Oxford, Mommsen and the 'new Ancient History'
Lancing College, the CIL and the return to Oxford
The 'mission' - on paper
Excavation as 'big business' in Britain
Improving Roman Britain
The First World War and Haverfield's 'students'
Haverfield's reputation and influence
Haverfield into the next millennium
Haverfield, R G Collingwood and beyond
Romano-British studies in the new century
Appendix 1: The Berlin letters
Appendix 2: Haverfield and The Antiquary
Appendix 3: British universities and British antiquities
Appendix 4: The teaching of ancient history and archaeology at Oxford 1915
Appendix 5: Mortimer Wheeler and the progress of Romano-British archaeology
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Freemans work represents an important contribution to the study of an extremely interesting period - not just in Romano-British archaeology but in archaeology in general.'

Collingwood and British Idealism Studies, 2007 - Stephen Leach

This is an authoritative and comprehensive history of the development of Romano-British archaeology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (and beyond)... should have a significant impact on the field and become a standard work of reference and point of departure for future scholarship on the history of Romano-British archaeology.

Britannia, Vol. 40, 2009 - Margarita Diaz-Andreu