UCL’s Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of the Social & Historical Sciences Faculty of University College London (UCL) which it joined in 1986 having previously been a school of the University of London. It is currently one of the largest centres for the study of archaeology, cultural heritage and museum studies in the world, with over 100 members of staff and 600 students housed in a 1950s building on the north side of Gordon Square in the Bloomsbury area of Central London.
History
The Institute of Archaeology had its origins in Mortimer Wheeler’s vision of a centre for archaeological training in the United Kingdom, which he conceived in the 1920s. Thanks to the efforts of Wheeler and his wife Tessa, his ambitions were realised when the institute was officially opened in 1937, with Mortimer Wheeler as its first director. Among its early members of staff were some of the founding ancestors of archaeology in Britain. Foremost among these, apart from Wheeler himself, was V. Gordon Childe, director from 1946 to 1957, but there were many others, including Kathleen Kenyon, excavator of Jericho, initially secretary then the institute’s acting director during World War II; F. E. Zeuner, one of the founders of quaternary studies and of zooarchaeology; Joan du Plat Taylor, the institute’s librarian for many years, who was a pioneer of underwater archaeology; and Max Mallowan, Professor of Western Asiatic Archaeology (and second husband of Agatha Christie). Mortimer Wheeler formally resigned as Honorary Director in 1944 when he became Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India and, at the end of the Second World War, the Directorship was awarded to V. Gordon Childe. Following Childe’s retirement, this role passed to W. F. Grimes, like Wheeler a former Director of the London Museum, and best known today for his 1954 excavation of the London Mithraeum. Following Grimes, the Directorship has been held by the Mediterranean prehistorian John Davies Evans; the geographer David R. Harris; Peter Ucko, founder of the World Archaeological Congress and the prehistorian and evolutionary theorist Stephen Shennan. It is currently held by prehistorian Sue Hamilton. Until 1958, the institute was based at St John’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, London subsequently moving to purpose-built premises on Gordon Square designed by Booth, Ledeboer, and Pinckheard. The Institute taught a diploma until the first BA degree was offered in 1968, followed shortly thereafter by a BSc. 2012 marked the institute’s 75th anniversary and a number of events and activities were held to mark this occasion.
Research and teaching
