A 'splendid idiosyncrasy' - Pamela Jane Smith

It is often assumed that, in Britain,archaeology has always been a university-inspired course. However, theidentification of qualified scientific archaeology with a formal education is atwentieth-century phenomenon. Archaeology as a waged, educated, vocationalpursuit is a recent development. At the beginning of the twentieth century,there were no degree courses in archaeology, no profession or professionals, noformal controls over recruitment, nor institutionalised avenues of entry, norestablished examination-based qualifying standards, certainly no faculties,textbooks, lectures, practicals, nor archaeological libraries. Britishuniversities have produced great lineages of descendants who practisearchaeological specialisations the world over. Yet, it is not known why or howarchaeology became a university option. There are no specific histories of howarchaeology was institutionalised as a university degree subject in GreatBritain and Eire. The entire history of all twentieth-century archaeologies, notjust prehistoric, but classical, Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon, mediaeval andhistoric, can be viewed through the lens of amateur versus universityprofessional and how these terms became defined and used. A university-basedgroup emerged during the twentieth century, whose members gainfully assertedthat anyone who was not university centred, or at least university-trained, wasan amateur. It is widely accepted today that if you do not have a degree youare not a professional archaeologist. How did this happen? Who consideredthemselves professionals? Who preferred to be defined as amateur and how didthe self-identity of archaeologists change? This work focuses on one smallcrucial beginning of this fascinating evolutionary process. It is the first historyof its kind and is intended to be a block for the building of a broaderinformed history of British academic archaeology. It will hopefully set anexample for other historians of archaeological institutions to follow.