Is it really CA 400? Was it really 56 years ago that we launched a new magazine called Current Archaeology? Were we really rash enough to send it out to 5,000 names that I had collected, offering a subscription of six issues a year for the princely sum of £1? We held our breath – but on the very next day, 28 subscriptions came in. Each had a cheque for £1 – and we faced an immediate problem: they were all made out to ‘Current Archaeology’, and we had not registered the name with the bank. We hurriedly did so, and by the time the second magazine came out we had 1,000 subscriptions. It had worked! We were the proud publishers of an archaeological magazine.
From then on, Wendy and I spent our time chasing up articles, driving furiously round the country in our Dormobile to visit excavations, meet the archaeologists, and write up their stories. We always aimed to do three digs a day, and in the evening we would find a convenient spot to write up the reports and camp for the night. Every year we also aimed to get up into Scotland, where the archaeology felt exciting and slightly exotic – we liked raiding Scotland.
Computers have changed everything in the publishing world, but in those early days putting the magazine together was very different. We sent the text to the printers, who sent back galleys – long strips of paper with a column of text printed on it. Illustrations went to a block-maker who prepared a sheet of copper with a wooden backing. We then ‘pasted up’ (literally, using glue) the galleys on a large sheet of paper, and sent it off to the printers, who put the corrected proofs and the blocks together by hammering them into position. The compositors worked so speedily that they would often hold a row of nails between their teeth, ready for use.
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