In last month’s Current Archaeology, I began a tour of Wales in the north of the country, examining its rich prehistoric archaeology. In this and the next column, I will turn my eyes gradually southward, visiting first mid- and south-west Wales, and then south and south-east Wales.
Archaeological Top Guns
Several early issues of Current Archaeology feature the professional origins of two of the most influential archaeologists of late-20th-century Britain: Philip Barker (1920-2001) and Geoffrey Wainwright (1937-2017). CA 2 (May 1967) met the latter at Walesland Rath in Pembrokeshire, five miles west of Haverfordwest. Here, Wainwright was examining – with a gusto that he became infamous for – an Iron Age enclosure. CA returned to the site in issue 12 (January 1969) and, later, to the man, following his career at a series of sites and professional appointments of increasing importance, including serving as Chief Archaeologist of English Heritage from 1989 to 1999. During this time, he was instrumental in establishing the planning archaeology system of PPG16 that influences approaches to archaeology across the UK, and around the world, to this day. While mainly employed in England, Wainwright had been born in Wales, and maintained connections with the country throughout his life, ending his days there, living in the village of Pontfaen in Pembrokeshire. In an act of accidental obituary just prior to his death, CA 324 (March 2017) examined his work on the Neolithic archaeology of Pembrokeshire, undertaken in partnership with his long-term research collaborator Tim Darvill.
A very different archaeologist, and a very different site, featured in CA 5 (November 1967): Hen Domen in Powys, just outside Montgomery. There, Philip Barker was at the time excavating a medieval timber motte-and-bailey castle, the site of the original Montgomery castle, built in AD 1070. CA returned to the site in issue 111 (September 1988), and Barker’s life and work cropped up regularly elsewhere in the magazine. His obituary in issue 174 (June 2001) tells of a quietly influential personality (an absolute contrast to the physical force of nature that was Wainwright), whose fieldwork at sites like Wroxeter (see my column in CA 338, May 2018), and whose publications, notably his textbook Techniques of Archaeological Excavation, would influence generations of archaeologists.
