Books in the Archaeological Lives series

This book relates three years (1921-1924) in the life of Gilbert Bagnani, a young Italian archaeologist in Greece, based on his letters to his mother in Rome, at first as a non-partisan observer of, and later as an active participant in, some of the most tumultuous events in modern Greek history.

Shifting Sand is the journal of Julian Berry, then a 17-year-old archaeologist, written on-site during excavations in Jordan, 1964. The book provides a fascinating insight into the lives of archaeologists over 50 years ago, and the very close links between the European team, the Arab workmen, and the daily life in a simple mud-brick village.

Martin Davies examines Thomas Hardy's involvement with the past and the role it plays in his life and literary work. Hardy's life encompasses the transformation of archaeology out of mere antiquarianism into a fully scientific discipline. He observed this process at first hand, and its impact on his aesthetic and philosophical scheme was profound.

This is the first memoir by an internationally known archaeological scientist, written with humour and a critical concern to understand the nature of his life and that of our species. It provides a very readable account of a life embracing field and laboratory work from Orkney to Egypt and Mongolia to Peru.

This volume provides the first detailed biography Percy Manning (1870-1917), an Oxford antiquary who amassed enormous collections about the history of Oxford and Oxfordshire.

Letters between Caroline Ransom Williams, the first American university-trained female Egyptologist, and James Henry Breasted, the first American Egyptologist and founder of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, show that Ransom Williams had a full life and productive career as the first American female Egyptologist.

This well researched biography provides a comprehensive account of the life and works of William Gershom Collingwood (1854-1932), a nineteenth century polymath whose story should be better known. He was a noted friend and colleague of John Ruskin, whose secretary he later became.

James Douglas (1753-1819) was a polymath, well ahead of his time in both the fields of archaeology and earth-sciences. This book recounts his archaeological and other activities in Sussex during the first two decades of the 19th century.

A biography of Dr John Disney (1779-1857), the benefactor of the first chair in archaeology at a British university. He also donated his major collection of Classical sculptures to the University of Cambridge. The sculptures continue to be displayed in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The second volume of the biography of prominent Soviet archaeologist Aleksei P. Okladnikov (1908-1981) concentrates on his works in 1961-1981, when he was a director at the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in Novosibirsk. during this time he continued his active fieldworks in Siberia, Russian Far East, Central Asia and Mongolia.