This archive was housed in a sealed room in the site of Abydos, in Egypt, and discovered in 2013. Records relate to the Egyptian Antiquities Service between the 1840s and the 1960s, a critical period for archaeology in Egypt.  Importantly, this archive reflects to the work of Egyptian inspectors and guards in the Egyptian Antiquities Service during this period. The project is currently conserving  and cataloguing the archive, and preparing a searchable database of the collection.

Twitter: @AbydosArchive
Blog: abydosarchive.org/

Further Reading: 
Shalaby, N., Abu El-Azm, H., Damarany, A., Kaiser, J., Abdallah, H.S., Abu El-Yazid, M., Abd El-Raziq, Y., Baker, F., Hashesh, Z., Ibrahim, W., Minor, E., Regelein, R. and Tarek, A. 2018. The Lost Papers: Rewriting the Narrative of Early Egyptology with the Abydos Temple Paper Archive. ARCE Bulletin [Online]: https://www.arce.org/abydos-paper-archive
Abydos Temple Paper Archive Project. Egypt Exploration Society website: www.ees.ac.uk/atpa

Founded in 1881, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens continues to be an integral part of archaeological research in Greece, along with the other 'foreign' schools in Athens. The ASCSA has extensive archival collections, including the personal papers of staff and students, excavation records, administrative history records, and photographs.
 
Website: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ASCSAthens
Archive webpage: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/research/personal-papers-and-archives
 
Downloadable annual reports (from 1881): https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/ascsa-annual-reports
 
Explore the history of the School through "From the Archivist's Notebook" the blog of School archivist Natalia Vogiekoff-Brogan.

Founded in 1879, the Hellenic Society continues to support research in the classical world. With subscriptions, it helped to finance travels and explorations into Greece and Asia Minor in the 1880s and provided grants for some of the early British School at Athens students.

The Society has made some of its archive relating to its founder George Macmillan, and one of the archaeologists it first supported, William Mitchell Ramsay, available online. The Society also holds the photographic collection of WJ Stillman, comprising historic images of Greece.

​Twitter: @Hellenic_Soc
Website: https://www.hellenicsociety.org.uk/
Digital Collections: https://www.hellenicsociety.org.uk/about-us/george-a-macmillan-lettres/

Further Reading: 
Doyle, Richella. 2009. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Archive of George A. Macmillan's Personal Papers. Archaeological Reports 56: 203-218.

Summary by Amara Thornton

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was a British traveller, archaeologist and political official, who is most well known for her participation in intelligence with the Arab Bureau during the First World War, her subsequent role as Political Advisor to the Cairo Peace Conference in 1919, and her role as the Director of Antiquities in Iraq from 1922 to 1926 and founder of the Museum of Antiquities (now Iraq Museum) in Baghdad.  Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in Modern History, Bell made her name as a noted traveller and mountaineer from the 1890s onwards, publishing several travel books before the First World War.

Newcastle University holds a large collection of Bell's letters, diaries and photographs showing her life and explorations in the Middle East. The University has also developed a comic book based on Bell's life and letters, as well as teachers' resources for schools.

Scope of collection:
photographs (inc. Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Balkans, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Canada and Bell's "personalia"), diaries (1877-1917), letters (1874-1926)

University Website: http://gertrudebell.ncl.ac.uk/
Archive website: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/gertrudebell/
Twitter: @GertrudeBellArc
Email: [email protected]

Founded in 1886, the British School at Athens (BSA) continues to be a centre for the study of archaeology, art and architecture of ancient Greece and the Greek world. The BSA has an extensive archive including administrative records of the School, records of the School's many excavations, and personal papers. A recent addition to the School's Digital Collections is the 1887 diary of Emily Penrose, daughter of the School's first Director Francis Cranmer Penrose, charting her time in Athens.

Website: https://www.bsa.ac.uk/
Twitter: @BSAthens
Archive webpage: www.bsa.ac.uk/about-us/archive/
Digital Collections: https://digital.bsa.ac.uk/

One of a large number of local archaeological societies in the United Kingdom, the Glasgow Archaeological Society was established in 1856  on the foundation of an earlier Society established over a decade earlier.  Its aims were to promote and research the archaeology of the city of Glasgow and the West of Scotland.  The GAS's association with the University of Glasgow began in 1906, and with the instigation of the Dalrymple Fund many important archaeologists were brought to Glasgow to deliver public lectures on European Archaeology.

Scope of Collection:
minutes, letters, reports, copies of Society Transactions and newsletters (1856-2006)
Further details on the material available in the GAS archive can be found via Archives Hub here.

Website: http://www.glasarchsoc.org.uk/

Relevant Contact:
University of Glasgow Archives Services

Further Reading:
Mearns, J. 2007. 150 Years of Glasgow Archaeological Society. Scottish Archaeological Journal 30 (1-2): vi-xvii.

Summary by Amara Thornton

Founded in 1707 for researching the antiquities and monuments of the British Isles, the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) holds an important place in the history of archaeology as a supporter and campaigner for archaeology and heritage. It was a key venue for reporting discoveries through public lectures and hosted exhibitions of excavated artefacts from Britain and abroad.  Researchers will find relevant material in several collections at the SAL: in the Library, the Archives and Prints and Drawings.  The SAL also holds the records of the Society of Dilettanti and the Royal Archaeological Institute.

Scope of collections:
Administrative records (SAL Minute Books, SAL Executive Committee Minute Books, Council Books, Fellowship blue papers and lists), exhibition pamphlets, archaeological archives for excavations (including Old Sarum, Silchester, Stonehenge, Glastonbury), prints and drawings of antiquities and topography, photographs, correspondence

Website: https://www.sal.org.uk/
https://www.sal.org.uk/library/manuscripts-and-archives/
Twitter: @SocAntiquaries

Relevant Contacts:
Library email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

Evans, J. 1956. A History of the Society of Antiquaries. London: Oxford University Press. 

Gaimster, D. McCarthy, S. and Nurse, B. 2007. Making History: Antiquaries in Britain, 1707-2007. London: Royal Academy of Arts.

Pearse, S. 2007. Visions of Antiquity: the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1707-2007. London: Society of Antiquaries of London.

Summary by Amara Thornton, with additional information from Colin Penman, UCL Special Collections, Archives and Records

University College London was established in 1828 in order to provide higher education to (mainly) middle-class students. Unlike Oxford and Cambridge, the other two universities in England at that time, UCL enabled students from any religious background to gain higher education.  When the University of London was set up in the 1830s, UCL students were then able to sit for degree examinations at the University of London examination board.  In the 1870s women were admitted as UCL students on the same terms as men.

UCL had an Archaeology department from the 1880s, and in 1892 Flinders Petrie was appointed the first Professor of Egyptian Archaeology, a post funded by Amelia Blandford Edwards.  Edwards' bequest was given to UCL because the College admitted women. 

UCL Special Collections, Archives and Records holds the records of UCL, including material relating to UCL Egyptology and Archaeology departments organisation, staff and students, as well as the Slade School archives.

Scope of collection:
Student records, college prospectus, registers, fees books, correspondence, administrative records, plans, photographs.

Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/collections/records
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @UCLRecords

Further Reading

Hale Bellot, H. 1929. University College London 1826-1926. London: University of London Press.

Harte, N. & North J. 2004. The World of UCL, 1828-2004. London: UCL Press.

Harte, N. 1986. The University of London 1836-1986: an illustrated history. London: Athelone Press.

Janssen, R. 1992. The first hundred years: Egyptology at University College London. London: Petrie Museum.

Sheppard, K. 2015. Margaret Alice Murray and Archaeological Training in the Classroom: Preparing “Petrie’s Pups”. In W. Carruthers (Ed.). Histories of Egyptology: interdisciplinary measures. New York: Routledge.

Summary by Clare Lewis

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology originated as a teaching resource for the Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London (UCL). Both the department and the museum were created in 1892 through the bequest of the writer Amelia Edwards (1831-1892). Her bequest included several hundred artefacts, and the collection grew due to the excavating career of William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), the first Edwards Professor of Egyptology at UCL, 1892-1933.

In 1913 Petrie sold his large collection of Egyptian antiquities to UCL. The collection and library were arranged in galleries within the university and a guidebook published in 1915 although most of the visitors were students and academics as it was not then open to the general public at this time. Petrie retired from UCL in 1933, though his successors continued to add to the collections, excavating in other parts of Egypt and the Sudan. During the Second World War (1939-1945) the collection was moved out of London for safekeeping. In the early 1950s it was brought back and housed ‘temporarily’ in a former stable building, where it remains today. By 2001 the Petrie Museum housed c.80,000 objects.
 
Scope of the collections:
The Petrie Museum holds papers of Sir (William Matthew) Flinders Petrie comprising of diaries, letters, drawings incl. watercolours, manuscript drafts of publications, photographs, scrapbooks, some equipment used on excavation, pocket diaries, journals, tomb cards, distribution lists and catalogues. It also includes some material from  A.J. (Anthony) Arkell, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, Margaret Drower, Margaret Murray, and the Wellcome collection.
 
Website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie
Blog: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/category/petrie/
Twitter: @PetrieMuseEgypt
 
Relevant contacts:
Maria Ragan, Museum Manager
 
Further Reading
Challis, D. 2013. The Archaeology of Race -The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
 
Drower, M. S. 1995. Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press.
 
Janssen, R.M. 1992. The First Hundred Years: Egyptology At University College London, 1892-1992. London: UCL.
 
Quirke, S. 2009. Petrie archives in London and Oxford. In D. Magee, J. Bourriau, S. Quirke (Eds.), Sitting beside Lepsius. Studies in Honour of Jaromir Malek at the Griffith Institute Leuven: Peeters. pp. 439-461.

Quirke, S. 2010. Hidden Hands: Egyptian Workforces in Petrie Excavation Archives 1880-1924. London: Bloomsbury.
 
Sheppard, K.L. 2013. The Life Of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work In Archaeology. Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books.
 
Stevenson, A. (ed.) 2015. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology Characters and Collections. London: UCL Press.