Founded in 1901, the British School at Rome joined the British School at Athens (est. 1886) as a centre for archaeologists, architects, artists and travellers to engage with the archaeology, architecture, art and history of Rome, Italy and beyond.  Originally housed in the Palazzo Odescalchi, in 1916 the BSR moved to its current premises, a converted Edwin Lutyens building originally designed as the British Pavilion in the 1911 International Exhibition.

One early BSR director was Thomas Ashby, who alongside Assistant Director Eugénie Sellers Strong presided over the School in early 20th century.  The archaeologist John Ward-Perkins, Director of the BSA just after WW2, also made an important contribution to archaeology in Italy through field surveys.

Archive projects include "Thomas Ashby and the First World War" and "Ashby and the Abruzzo".

Scope of collections:
Photographs, documents (inc. School administrative records, correspondence), maps, prints

Website: http://www.bsr.ac.uk/
Archives webpage: http://www.bsr.ac.uk/library/archive
Digital Collections website: www.bsr.ac.uk/library/digital-collections; http://www.bsrdigitalcollections.it/ 
Blog: britishschoolatrome.wordpress.com/category/library-archive/
Twitter: @the_bsr

Relevant contact:
Alessandra Giovenco, Archivist

Further Reading
Dyson, S. 2001. Eugenie Sellers Strong: Portrait of an Archaeologist.

Wallace-Hadrill, A. 2001. The British School at Rome: One Hundred Years. London: British School at Rome.

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.

Summary by Juliette Desplat (Head, Modern Overseas, Intelligence and Security Records, The National Archives)

The National Archives (TNA) is a government department and an executive agency of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. TNA is the official archive and publisher for UK central government, and for England and Wales. It is the agency which collects and secures the future of the government record, both digital and physical, to preserve it for generations to come, and to make it as accessible and available as possible.
 
Scope of collections:
The National Archives holds the records of the central government. As archaeology and (geo)politics have always had close links, a lot of material relates to archaeological matters. The main collections to consider are the records of the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, War Office, Admiralty, Air Ministry, Works Department and Treasury, as well as discreet collections of maps and photographs.

These contain correspondence and minutes, memoranda and reports, treaties, pieces of legislation (antiquities laws and concessions), press cuttings, maps, sketches and photographs. The occasional excavation diary can also be found, along with information on archaeologists in their dealings with the government (notably military intelligence).
 
Website: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Twitter: @UKNatArchives
Blog: http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ or http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/author/jdesplat/
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives
 
Relevant Contacts:
Dr Juliette Desplat – Head, Modern Overseas, Intelligence and Security Records.

Summary by Amara Thornton

A project funded 2004-2008 to explore and connect archaeological archives in Europe. Project website links to publications, listings of archives and events held in relation to the project.

Website: http://www.area-archives.org/data.html

Further Reading:

Schlanger, N. and Nordbladh, J. (Eds.). 2008. Archives, Ancestors, Practices: archaeology in the light of its history. New York. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Summary by Amara Thornton, with additional information from Nancy Charley, Royal Asiatic Society

The Royal Asiatic Society was established in London in 1823 for the study of the science, art, literature and culture of Asia. Members included individuals living in Britain and overseas, networks of contacts helped to feed information about the archaeology and antiquities of Asia, particularly India, from the beginning of the Society's history.  A special "Committee of Correspondence" was established for this purpose. The East India Company was an early supporter of the RAS, and branches were established in Bombay, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Hong Kong by 1850.  The scope of papers in the Society's Journal is wide - topics relate to history, travels, language and literature, antiquities, peoples and cultures, and archaeology. 

The RAS was a particularly important venue for discussion and scholarship in Assyriology. Archaeologist Henry Creswicke Rawlinson presented his work in copying and deciphering cunieform tablets in Persia (Iran) at the Society in the mid-19th century.  The RAS played host to the 2nd International Congress of Orientalists in London in 1873, the year of its fiftieth anniversary. In 1919, the Society of Biblical Archaeology merged with the Royal Asiatic Society, bringing a further archaeological focus to the Society's remit. By the late 1920s, reports were read by archaeologist Reginald Campbell Thompson at RAS meetings of excavations in Iraq.

Scope of collections:
Minute books, films, artwork, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, maps, printed matter and the collection of Horace Geoffrey Quaritch Wales (including furniture, photographs and papers). See RAS website for further details. The Society also holds a large collection of archaeologist Aurel Stein's photographs.

Website: http://royalasiaticsociety.org/
​Digital Collections: https://royalasiaticcollections.org/
Blog: http://royalasiaticsociety.org/blog/
Twitter: @RAS_Soc

Relevant contacts:
Nancy Charley, Archivist
Ed Weech, Librarian

Links:
Centenary Volume of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1923)

Regulations of the Royal Asiatic Society

Summary by Clare Lewis

Based in the Sackler Library in Oxford the Griffith Institute, established in 1939, is home to an important set of Egyptology resources. The archive evolved from the first Egyptology Professor at Oxford, F Ll Griffith’s (1862-1934) papers and excavation records. Sir Alan Gardiner (1879-1963) donated many antiquarian manuscripts and the archive has continued to benefit from the donation of various materials. The Institute holds, amongst others, the papers of Sir Alan H. Gardiner, Battiscombe Gunn (1883-1950) and Jaroslav Černý (1898-1970) and the records made by Howard Carter (1874-1939) during his excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun. The archive now consists of over 130 manuscript groups from Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. The digital catalogue includes some transcripts, for example of Flinders Petrie's excavation journals. There is also a microsite for the diary of Minnie Burton, wife of Harry Burton, photographer for Howard Carter in Egypt during the Tutankhamun excavations.  The Griffith Institute has also recently acquired the diary of Jenny Lane, who as maid to Lucy Renshaw accompanied Amelia Edwards and Renshaw to Egypt in the 1870s.
 
Scope of the collection
Scholarly papers, nineteenth century photographs, paintings, squeezes, rubbings and drawings. The complete original excavation records from the tomb of Tutankhamun form a core group.
 
Website: www.griffith.ox.ac.uk
Blog: http://blog.griffith.ox.ac.uk
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/griffithinstitute/
Digital Catalogue: http://archive.griffith.ox.ac.uk/index.php/
 
Relevant Contacts
Elizabeth Fleming, Topographical Bibliography & Archive Assistant
Cat Warsi, Administrator & Archive Assistant
 
Further Reading
Stevenson, A. 2015. The object of study: Egyptology, archaeology, and anthropology at Oxford, 1860-1960. In Carruthers, W. (ed.), Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures. New York; London: Routledge. p. 19-33.