Oxford Archaeology at 50: Exploring half a century of excavations

Back in CA 40, our Editor-in-Chief Andrew Selkirk described being abandoned by a taxi driver and left to pick his way across a building site towards a row of condemned cottages. This unlikely setting was the scene of launch celebrations for a new arrival in the heritage world – the Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit – and, 50 years later, it was my turn to travel to Oxford to mark an equally important milestone: the unit’s half-century. Today, the organisation is known as Oxford Archaeology, and the festivities were held in the rather more comfortable surroundings of an airy conference centre a stone’s throw from the unit’s present head office in Osney Mead. Afterwards, I caught up wi