The AGM was followed by a talk on by Oscar Aldred on Sir Cyril Fox and the Archaeology of the Cambridge region. Sir Cyril Fox PhD FSA FBA MRIA (1882-1967) was an archaeologist and director of the National Museum of Wales, who went up to Magdalene College, University of Cambridge to read – as of then – Section B of the English Tripos in 1919. Extraordinarily, Professor HM Chadwick, his college tutor, transferred Fox to read for a PhD after his first year. After completing his PhD in 1922, Fox subsequently published it with few amendments in 1923 with Cambridge University Press. This is not remarkable in itself, but it is rather that the topic of study which was highly regarded: the title of his dissertation and publication was ‘The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region’ (ACR). In ACR, Fox outlined the basis for a landscape approach to archaeology, that has formed the foundation for landscape archaeology. In this talk, drawing on examples of Fox’s archaeological work from the Cambridge region and beyond, I will examine what made Fox’s study significant, and how it transformed our thinking about the past.

Oscar Aldred PhD FSA works for the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, within the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, and is a Member of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and the Centre for Landscape Regeneration, also at Cambridge. His main research interests are in landscape archaeology, excavation, the history of archaeology, and archaeological method and theory. He specialises in later prehistory to post-medieval times, and the archaeology of the North Atlantic and the UK. He is widely published, including the book ‘The Archaeology of Movement’ (Routledge 2021) and an article in 2023 about the 100 year anniversary of Fox’s ACR in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (PCAS).