A History of Archaeology in Great Britain

Abstract

Archaeology in Britain spans the entire history of archaeology as a field of enquiry, and it may be no co-incidence, therefore, that Britain is where some of the most significant developments took place in shaping the modern profession. That said, archaeology in Britain has been the domain of the amateur for most of its history and the role of the amateur in an increasingly professionalised field, enabled largely by commercial funding, is a long-standing debate in British archaeology. It is also one of the themes of this chapter. The other two themes we address are, first, the development of archaeological techniques and second, the development of multiple readings of the British past.