‘Buried Landscapes’ in Southern Italy

Antiquity ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 23 (90) ◽  
pp. 58-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bradford
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Association Meeting ◽  
The University ◽  
Capital Value ◽  
Dense Concentration

It is widely known that war-time air photography has led to the discovery of many new archaeological sites of importance in Mediterranean lands. Many hundreds of tumuli have been added to the list, at such famous Etruscan cemeteries as Cerveteri and Tarquinia and complete systems of Roman land-partition by Centuriation have been identified round the coloniae of Iader and Salonae, on the shores of Dalmatia. But by far the most notable discoveries of all are those on the Foggia Plain, in the Province of Apulia, in Southeast Italy. Great numbers of Prehistoric, Roman, and Medieval sites are being identified, and some preliminary results have already been published in ANTIQUITY(' Siticulosa Apulia ', December 1946). Select examples were exhibited at the Classical Conference at Oxford and at the British Association Meeting, in 1948, and again for several months this year, in the Ashmolean Museum. These were chosen from a number which it was fortunately possible to acquire for the University of Oxford, now housed at the Pitt Rivers Museum, where they are being studied in detail. This collection was based on vertical photographs taken by the Royal Air Force, and oblique photographs taken by Major Williams-Hunt and myself (which were the first to reveal this dense concentration of sites, spread more thickly on the ground than almost anywhere else in Europe). This heavy concentration is of much more than local importance. During the last few years I have examined many thousands of air photographs of Southern and Central Europe taken at various seasons, in the course of my research. While these provide much interesting data and give us, as it were, an illustrated ' Domesday ' survey of Europe in the middle of the 20th century (of capital value to Anthropology), in no other area has there as yet been anything approaching the quantity of crop-marks, grass-marks, soil-marks and earthworks which have come to light in Apulia. There are various reasons for this and a detailed account must await a later report. For our present purposes, it will be enough to single out one or two areas, for comparison.

Fieldwork on aerial discoveries in Attica and Rhodes. Part I. The Town plan of Classical Rhodes

1956 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bradford
Keyword(s):  
Field Research ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Field Reconnaissance ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The University ◽  
The Town ◽  
Second World

This report gives a brief account of a field reconnaissance in the Levant during August and September 1955. Seven weeks were spent in ground-checking archaeological sites noticed on air photographs taken by the Royal Air Force over Greece and Rhodes during the Second World War, and later in Cyprus. Assisted by my wife, I was able in these few weeks to locate and to examine in detail a large number of archaeological features, as the consequence of having these photographs as a guide. I shall reserve for a future occasion the description of the results and discoveries from our work in Cyprus, which was based on (i) my study of some thousands of photographs which the Department of Lands and Surveys in Nicosia kindly made available, and (ii) ground-checks on foot in various parts of the island. A very helpful grant of £50 given by the Craven Committee in the University of Oxford contributed towards the cost of this short campaign in 1955. The work was in direct continuation of my field research in Mediterranean lands since 1945, with the emphasis extended for the moment to the eastern end. This was a planned sequel to discoveries which I had made years ago, and an opportunity to complete them with fieldwork on the ground had been long awaited.

scholarly journals Harold Garnet Callan. 5 March 1917 — 3 November 1993 Elected FRS 1963

2003 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Joseph G. Gall
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
World War ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Chief Interest ◽  
The University ◽  
Insight Into

With the death of Harold Garnet (‘Mick’) Callan on 3 November 1993, the community of cell biologists lost one of the twentieth century's most profound and colourful students of chromosomes. During his 50-year scientific career the study of chromosomes and genes went from purely descriptive and morphological to deeply analytical and molecular. Steeped by training in the earlier tradition, Callan nevertheless contributed enormously to this revolution with his meticulous studies on the giant chromosomes of amphibians, all the while maintaining that he was a ‘mere cytologist’ on whom much of the molecular analysis was lost. Mick Callan and I were professional colleagues and close personal friends whose careers intersected at many points. We visited and worked in each other's laboratories, we published together, we generated a voluminous correspondence (much of it in the days when letters were handwritten), and our families enjoyed many good times together in Scotland and the USA. My most difficult task in writing this biography has been to extract from the vast amount of public and personal information in my possession those parts of Mick Callan's life and work that will be of chief interest to a broader audience. I have been helped in this by a 30 000-word autobiography written by him near the end of his life, covering the period from his birth in 1917 to the end of World War II in 1945. This account provides considerable insight into the factors that shaped his later professional career and is an engrossing account of the life of a boy in prewar England and a young man at Oxford and in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the worst days of the war. Callan's autobiography has been deposited in the University library, St Andrews, Scotland.

Irregular Earthworks in Eastern Siam: an air survey

Antiquity ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 24 (93) ◽  
pp. 30-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. D. R. Williams-Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States Army ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Photographic Evidence ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
Army Air Force

During the war and in the immediate post-war period the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force undertook a considerable air survey programme covering Burma, Siam and French Indo-China. In Siam the initial cover was restricted to large-scale (1:15,000 and better) photographs of towns, airfields and communications. Later a more ambitious programme of survey cover (scales 1 : 50,000 and 1 : 25,000 with a few towns and beaches at larger scale) was undertaken, and practically the whole of the country has been covered by air photographs of one scale or another.It has been my privilege to serve with the R.A.F. in Siam on both ground and flying duties and, more recently, to be in a position to examine most of the photographs taken. A very considerable number of archaeological sites have come to light, many being noted for the first time ; and it is my intention in this initial paper to comment briefly on one particular type of earthwork which appears to have a limited distribution in eastern Siam. The air photographs are reproduced with the sanction of the Air Ministry.It must be emphasized that although Siam, the meeting place of Indian and Chinese cultures, is rich in archaeological sites very little systematic work has yet been undertaken. On the one side the natural reluctance of the Siamese to disturb ancient sites and, on the other, comparative absence of trained archaeological research workers have been contributory factors. Detailed ground information generally is lacking and it follows that these notes are based on air photographic evidence, in most cases without ground checking, an impropriety of which the writer is only too well aware.

scholarly journals Arthur Wormall, 1900-1964

1966 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 543-564 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Early Years ◽  
First Year ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Modern School ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Physiology And Biochemistry ◽  
The University

Arthur Wormall was born on 17 January 1900, in Leeds. He was the second of four children (two sons and two daughters) of James William Wormall, a printer and lithographer by trade, and his wife, Anne Wormall [neePhillis). At eleven years Arthur Wormall won a Junior City Scholarship to the Boys’ Modern School, Leeds, and at seventeen was awarded a Senior City Scholarship to Leeds University where he read for the Honours B.Sc. degree in chemistry under Professor J. B. Cohen, F.R.S. One of Wormall’s closest friends during these early years was H. R. Whitehead, who graduated at the same time as Wormall and married Wormall’s youngest sister, Ellen. From the time he entered the University in October 1917, Wormall served in the O.T.C. and he joined the Royal Air Force in June 1918, at the end of his first year. The 1914-1918 war came to an end suddenly in November, and so, after a short period of service, he was demobilized and was able to resume his studies. He graduated in 1921 and immediately started research and a year later was appointed Demonstrator in Biochemistry in the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry. In 1925 Wormall married Eva Jackson. In these early days at the University Wormall lived on the outskirts of Leeds, did not travel to any extent, and was much interested in his own county, Yorkshire. He played a good deal of cricket, golf and tennis, and several times went with the University team to play cricket matches against teams in Holland and Belgium.

Excavations at Ur, 1929-30

1930 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leonard Woolley
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Field Work ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
The University ◽  
Work Done ◽  
A Share

The eighth season of the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania started at Ur on 1st November 1929, and ended on 19th March 1930. The staff consisted of my wife, who as usual was responsible for the type-drawings of objects, the planning of the cemetery, and for a share in the field-work; Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan, general archaeological assistant; the Rev.E. Burrows, S.J., epigraphist; and Mr. A. S. Whitburn, architect. Hamoudi was, as always, head foreman, with his sons, Yahia, Ibrahim, and Alawi acting under him; owing to the fact that work was always going on in at least two spots fairly far apart, greater responsibility than usual was thrown on the younger foremen, who answered admirably to the demands on them; Yahia combined this work with that of staff photographer. The number of men employed varied slightly at different times, but was always over 200 and for most of the season kept at about 240, anumber well in excess of the average of past seasons; the amount of work done wascorrespondingly great. I have to thank the Royal Air Force in Iraq for help of many sorts and not least for an air photograph of the site (pl. XXVIII) taken at the close of the season and of much value for purposes of comparison with earlier photographs; Lt.-Colonel Tainsh, Director of the Iraq Railways, for facilities enabling me to undertake a short experimental dig at Meraijib, a prehistoric site some ten miles south of Ur; and the Director of Antiquities, Iraq, for his help in this Meraijib work and to the Expedition in general. I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to the staff of the British Museum Laboratory, where the work of restoring and cleaning was as usual carried out, and in particular to Mr. E. C. Padgham for his success with the silver objects; Mr. Evan Watkin of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities undertook the mending of the stone vases, and for the mending of the pottery the services of Mrs. F. W. Bard were secured.

scholarly journals Professor Robert D. Gillard: Transition Metal Chemist 1936–2013: Part I

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Burgess ◽  
Martyn V. Twigg
Keyword(s):  
Transition Metal ◽  
Metal Complexes ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Transition Metal Complexes ◽  
Alkaline Earth ◽  
Platinum Group Metal ◽  
Independent Research ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
The University ◽  
Large Research

This first part of a two-part commemoration of the life and work of Robert D. Gillard begins with a biographical outline which provides a context for his chemical achievements. He was awarded a State Scholarship and after his National Service in the Royal Air Force he went up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read Chemistry. There follows a chronological account of his career in Chemistry starting with his undergraduate days in Oxford, where a Part II project with Dr Harry Irving on alkaline earth and cobalt complexes proved seminal. His PhD research at Imperial College, London in the Geoffrey Wilkinson group broadened his experience into the then poorly developed chemistry of rhodium and other platinum group metal complexes. Gillard next went to Sheffield University as a Lecturer where he developed independent research while continuing to work on earlier topics. There followed a move to Canterbury as a Reader at the University of Kent. In his particularly productive seven years there with a large research group he widened his experience further, expanding his interests in such areas as the optical properties of transition metal complexes, considering biological and medical relevance, and increasing the range of metals and ligands he investigated. His subsequent time at Cardiff and then into retirement will be covered in the second part of this commemoration.

LAWRENCE RICKARD WAGER (1904–1965): A DISTINGUISHED GEOLOGIST WHO HELPED TO PIONEER AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION FOR ALLIED FORCES IN WORLD WAR II

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
EDWARD P. F. ROSE
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Standard Operating Procedure ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
World War ◽  
Skaergaard Intrusion ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
The University

ABSTRACT ‘Bill’ Wager, after undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, became a lecturer at the University of Reading in southern England in 1929. He was granted leave in the 1930s to participate in lengthy expeditions that explored the geology of Greenland, an island largely within the Arctic Circle. With friends made on those expeditions, he became in June 1940 an early recruit to the Photographic Development Unit of the Royal Air Force that pioneered the development of aerial photographic interpretation for British armed forces. He was quickly appointed to lead a ‘shift’ of interpreters. The unit moved in 1941 from Wembley in London to Danesfield House in Buckinghamshire, known as Royal Air Force Medmenham, to become the Central Interpretation Unit for Allied forces—a ‘secret’ military intelligence unit that contributed significantly to Allied victory in World War II. There Wager led one of three ‘shifts’ that carried out the ‘Second Phase’ studies in a three-phase programme of interpretation that became a standard operating procedure. Promoted in 1941 to the rank of squadron leader in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, he was given command of all ‘Second Phase’ work. Sent with a detachment of photographic interpreters to the Soviet Union in 1942, he was officially ‘mentioned in a Despatch’ on return to England. By the end of 1943 the Central Interpretation Unit had developed into a large organization with an experienced staff, so Wager was allowed to leave Medmenham in order to become Professor of Geology in the University of Durham. He resigned his commission in July 1944. Appointed Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford in 1950, he died prematurely from a heart attack in 1965, best remembered for his work on the igneous rocks of the Skaergaard intrusion in Greenland and an attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1933.

Global warming ushers in the dinosaur era

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beerling
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Mineral Wealth ◽  
Salmon Fisheries ◽  
Lecture Theatre ◽  
Association Meeting ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University ◽  
To Receive

Reverend William Buckland (1784–1856), a British vicar and palaeontologist, was the first Professor of Geology at the University of Oxford (1813) (see Plate 8). Charming and eloquent, Buckland was also an accomplished lecturer. His biographer summed him up rather well, remarking in 1894 ‘it is impossible to convey to the mind of any one who had never heard Dr. Buckland speak, the inimitable effect of that union of the most playful fancy with the most profound reflections which so eminently characterized his scientific oratory’. Brilliant and famously eccentric, he once offended stuffier colleagues at a British Association meeting in Bristol by strutting around the lecture theatre imitating chickens to demonstrate how prehistoric birds could have left footprints in the mud. On another occasion he: . . . attracted an audience totalling several thousand for a lecture in the famous Dudley Caverns, specially illuminated for the purpose. Carried away by the general magnificence, he was tempted into rounding off with a shameless appeal to the audience’s patriotism. The great mineral wealth lying around on every hand, he proclaimed, was no mere accident of nature; it showed rather, the express intention of Providence that the inhabitants of Britain should become, by this gift, the richest and most powerful nation on Earth. And with these words, the great crowd, with Buckland at its head, returned towards the light of day thundering out, with one accord, ‘God save the Queen!’. . . Buckland also claimed to have eaten his way straight through the animal kingdom as he studied it and, allegedly, part of Louis XIV’s embalmed heart, pinched from the snuffbox of his friend the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was aided in the eccentric culinary consumption of animals by his son Francis Buckland (1826–80), the celebrated Victorian naturalist and one-time Inspector of Her Majesty’s Salmon Fisheries, who evidently inherited his father’s eccentricity. Francis Buckland lived amongst beer-swilling monkeys, rats, and hares and regarded firing benzene at cockroaches through syringes as a fine sport. Francis arranged with London Zoo to receive off-cuts from the carcasses of unfortunate animals.

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