The Best Training Ground for Archaeologists: Francis Haverfield and the Invention of Romano-British Archaeology

To his contemporaries, Francis John Haverfield was the ‘father of Romano-British studies’, and his death on September 30th 1919 was greeted with widespread lamentation. In the decades immediately following his death, Haverfield’s reputation survived largely undiminished, in fact his view of the Romanisation of Britain became so widely accepted that it held sway for almost a century, and is only now being re-examined by both positive and negative interpreters of his views. What is clear however, is that his immense contribution to the study of Roman Britain is worthy of attention.