Brian Hope-Taylor, the Council for British Archaeology, and ‘The Need for Adequate Archaeological Propaganda’

Abstract

Brian Hope-Taylor (1923–2001) is remembered as one of the first archaeologists in the United Kingdom to introduce the discipline to a wider audience, through presenting television programmes in the 1960s. He also oversaw numerous excavations. The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) is known for being an educational charity, with the protection of the UK’s archaeological heritage and historic environment central to its activities. What is perhaps less well-known is that, in the 1940s, Hope-Taylor was behind a proposal to the CBA to introduce a campaign of ‘cheerful propaganda’, in order to raise awareness among the wider public about chance archaeological finds and their significance, and hence to persuade them to report these discoveries to appropriate ‘experts’. This paper uses archival evidence and the existing literature to examine, within a historical context, the proposed scheme. Had it come to fruition, it would have introduced principles and mechanisms for public reporting and recording of archaeological discoveries comparable to those laid out by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which itself did not come to fruition for another five decades.

Keywords:

• history of archaeology
• portable antiquities
• Council for British Archaeology
• Brian Hope-Taylor
• propaganda

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank in particular my colleague and friend Dr Natasha Ferguson for commenting on early drafts of this paper. Thanks to Dr Mike Heyworth at the Council for British Archaeology for advice on reference sources and for access to the CBA’s archives in York. Thanks to Laura Sole for access to the Brian Hope-Taylor material held on loan at Bede’s World, and for permission to reproduce her images. Special thank you to David Gurney and Andrew Rogerson for information concerning Tony Gregory and the Brian Hope-Taylor posters in Norfolk. Thank you to Stuart Campbell for permission to reproduce the Scottish Treasure Trove poster image. Also thank you, as always, to my PhD supervisor Professor Peter G. Stone of the School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University. This paper stems from research carried out for my PhD on the relationships between archaeologists and metal-detector users in England and Wales, which was partially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Notes

1 Further information on the Council for British Archaeology can be found here: <http://www.archaeologyuk.org>.

2 Broadly speaking, ‘portable antiquities’ are moveable cultural objects (see Bland, 2005a).

3 For more information on the Portable Antiquities Scheme, please see their website: <http://finds.org.uk>.

4 The full title of the Roberts Commission is ‘The American Commission for the Protection and Preservation of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas’.

5 A Process of Discovery was a temporary exhibition held at Bede’s World in South Tyneside in 2002, which had an associated conference. The exhibition was in part a commemoration of Brian Hope- Taylor, who had passed away the previous year. Exhibition themes focused primarily on Hope- Taylor’s contribution to the understanding of early medieval Northumberland, but also featured screenings of his television programmes, and exhibited the posters and material discussed in this paper. For more information on the exhibition, see Sole, 2005.

6 While the materials are undated, they most likely originate from the mid- to late 1940s.

7 ‘William Joyce, aka Lord Haw-Haw, was a notorious broadcaster of Nazi propaganda to the UK during World War II. His announcement &ldquo;Germany calling, Germany calling&rdquo; was a familiar sound across the airwaves, introducing threats and misinformation that he broadcast from his Hamburg base’ (BBC Archive, 2013).

8 Presented by the author at the ‘Portable Antiquities: Archaeology, Collecting, Metal Detecting’ conference in March 2010, Newcastle upon Tyne. A pdf of the presentation is available via: <http://www.archaeologyuk.org/sites/www.britarch.ac.uk/files/node-files/SThomas.pdf>.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suzie Thomas

Suzie Thomas is a Research Associate at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Glasgow. She currently works on Trafficking Culture, which researches the global traffic in illicit cultural property (see <http://traffickingculture.org>), funded by the European Research Council under FP7, grant number ERC StG-2011 283873 GTICO. From 2009 to 2012, she worked as the Community Archaeology Support Officer at the Council for British Archaeology based in York. In 2009 Suzie completed her PhD at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, for which she researched the relationships between archaeologists and metal-detector users in England and Wales.

From 1 April 2014 Suzie will begin work as University Lecturer in Museology at the University of Helsinki. Therefore, correspondence after this date to: Dr Suzie Thomas, Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, PO Box 59, Unioninkatu 38 A, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland. Email: [email protected]