page_title: Mortimer Wheeler
section_title: Institute of Archaeology: 1934–39
hierarchical_section_title: Mortimer Wheeler / Career / Institute of Archaeology: 1934–39
caption_attribution_description: English: St. John's Lodge. Symmetrical four-storey Neoclassical villa with an imposing pedimented entrance and balustrades around a valley roof surmounted by a small cupola and flanked by two-storey wings, the whole covered with stucco rendering painted pale pink. In front is a freshly mown lawn surrounded by plants and shrubs. In the foreground is a raised round stone pool with a bronze of a nude man being pulled into the water by a mermaid.
context_page_description: Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler FRS FBA FSA was a British archaeologist and officer in the British Army. Over the course of his career, he served as Director of both the National Museum of Wales and London Museum, Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, and the founder and Honorary Director of the Institute of Archaeology in London, in addition to writing twenty-four books on archaeological subjects.
  Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before moving to London in his teenage years. After studying classics at University College London, he began working professionally in archaeology, specialising in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler.
context_section_description: Wheeler had long desired to establish an academic institution devoted to archaeology that could be based in London. He hoped that it could become a centre in which to establish the professionalisation of archaeology as a discipline, with systematic training of students in methodological techniques of excavation and conservation and recognised professional standards; in his words, he hoped "to convert archaeology into a discipline worthy of that name in all senses". He further described his intention that the Institute should become "a laboratory: a laboratory of archaeological science".
  Many archaeologists shared his hopes, and to this end Petrie had donated much of his collection of Near Eastern artefacts to Wheeler, in the hope that it would be included in such an institution. Wheeler was later able to persuade the University of London, a federation of institutions across the capital, to support the venture, and both he and Tessa began raising funds from wealthy backers. In 1934, the Institute of Archaeology was officially opened, albeit at this point without premises or academic staff; the first students to enroll were Rachel Clay and Barbara Parker, who went on to have careers in the discipline. While Wheeler – who was still Keeper of the London Museum – took on the role of Honorary Director of the Institute, he installed the archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon as secretary of the Management Committee, describing her as "a level-headed person, with useful experience". That June, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Saint John (OStJ).
  After ending his work at Verulamium, Wheeler turned his attention to the late Iron Age hill-fort of Maiden Castle near to Dorchester, Dorset, where he excavated for four seasons from 1934 to 1937. Co-directed by Wheeler, Tessa, and the Curator of Dorset County Museum, Charles Drew, the project was carried out under the joint auspices of the Society of Antiquaries and the Dorset Field Club. With around 100 assistants each season, the dig constituted the largest excavation that had been conducted in Britain up to that point, with Wheeler organising weekly meetings with the press to inform them about any discoveries. He was keen to emphasise that his workforce consisted of many young people as well as both men and women, thus presenting the image of archaeology as a modern and advanced discipline. According to the later historian Adam Stout, the Maiden Castle excavation was "one of the most famous British archaeological investigations of the twentieth century. It was the classic 'Wheeler dig', both in terms of scale of operations and the publicity which it generated." 
  Wheeler's excavation report was published in 1943 as Maiden Castle, Dorset. The report's publication allowed further criticism to be voiced of Wheeler's approach and interpretations; in his review of the book, the archaeologist W. F. Grimes criticised the highly selective nature of the excavation, noting that Wheeler had not asked questions regarding the socio-economic issues of the community at Maiden Castle, aspects of past societies that had come to be of increasing interest to British archaeology. Over coming decades, as further excavations were carried out at the site and archaeologists developed a greater knowledge of Iron Age Britain, much of Wheeler's interpretation of the site and its development was shown to be wrong, in particular by the work of the archaeologist Niall Sharples.
  In 1936, Wheeler embarked on a visit to the Near East, sailing from Marseilles to Port Said, where he visited the Old Kingdom tombs of Sakkara. From there he went via Sinai to Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. During this trip, he visited various archaeological projects, but was dismayed by the quality of their excavations; in particular, he noted that the American-run excavation at Tel Megiddo was adopting standards that had been rejected in Britain twenty-five years previously. He was away for six weeks, and upon his return to Europe discovered that his wife Tessa had died of a pulmonary embolism after a minor operation on her toe. Accordin
caption: St. John's Lodge in Regent's Park, the first building to house the Institute of Archaeology
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