The Council for British Archaeology is celebrating its 75th birthday!
You may have noticed we’ve been talking a lot about our work over the last 75 years – and it’s for a simple reason. The CBA held its first meeting at 11:30am on the 8th of March, 1944 – 75 years ago this week. So this year the Festival is not only celebrating archaeology across the UK, it’s also a giant birthday party!
The idea of a “generally representative Council of British Archaeology” was first proposed at the Congress of Archaeological Societies at the Society of Antiquaries in London in May 1943. The minutes of the meeting show that the assembled archaeologists knew that after the damage caused to Britain’s historic environment during the war this issue would need to be urgently addressed as the war drew to a close. They felt that a national body was needed to ensure that ancient monuments and archaeological research were not forgotten in the rush to rebuild the country:
“For while many societies are already occupied with the archaeology of particular districts, periods or subjects, it is clear that none is sufficiently representative of British Archaeology as a whole to be competent to speak with authority both to the general public and to the Government upon problems of the post-war period.”
They created the idea of a national Council representing archaeologists from all over Britain, “whose opinion would be one of indisputable authority.” From this first suggestion, the CBA was born.
The first meeting of the CBA, in March 1944, created simultaneously the Council itself, the regional groups which are still active today across the country, and a set of expert panels to advise the CBA on different periods of archaeology, from “Paleolithic and Mesolithic” to “Renaissance and Beyond”.
The chair of this first meeting was Sir Alfred William Clapham, a renowned scholar of Romanesque architecture. Despite never going to university, over the course of his career he became Commissioner of the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments (forerunner of Historic England), President and Gold Medallist of the Society of Antiquaries, President of the Royal Archaeological Institute, Fellow of the British Academy, and – most definitely not least – the founding President of the Council for British Archaeology.
The aims of the CBA have not changed so much since that first meeting, even if archaeological practice has come on in leaps and bounds since 1944. To campaign for the better management of archaeology and to “enlighten the public concerning the records and monuments of the past” are still at the heart of our four main objectives as an organisation: participation; discovery; advocacy and sustainability. Our groups are still championing archaeology in their regions, and in our 75 years the CBA has led major projects to help record and celebrate archaeology for all – from creating the first Industrial Archaeology group to spearheading the Home Front Legacy recording project. And, of course, the first Day of Archaeology we created in 1990 has become a two-week-long Festival to celebrate #archaeologyforall !
We’re still going strong after 75 years, thanks to the support of our members, groups and volunteers. Let’s make the 2019 Festival a 75th birthday party to be proud of!
