Mortimer Wheeler
Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH CIE MC TD 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. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL.
In 1934, he established the Institute of Archaeology as part of the federal University of London, adopting the position of Honorary Director. In this period, he oversaw excavations of the Roman sites at Lydney Park and Verulamium and the Iron Age hill fort of Maiden Castle. During World War II, he re-joined the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of brigadier, serving in the North African Campaign and then the Allied invasion of Italy. In 1944 he was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, through which he oversaw excavations of sites at Harappa, Arikamedu, and Brahmagiri, and implemented reforms to the subcontinent's archaeological establishment. Returning to Britain in 1948, he divided his time between lecturing for the Institute of Archaeology and acting as archaeological adviser to Pakistan's government. In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience. Appointed Honorary Secretary of the British Academy, he raised large sums of money for archaeological projects, and was appointed British representative for several UNESCO projects.
Wheeler is recognised as one of the most important British archaeologists of the 20th century, responsible for successfully encouraging British public interest in the discipline and advancing methodologies of excavation and recording. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed as a major figure in the establishment of South Asian archaeology. However, many of his specific interpretations of archaeological sites have been discredited or reinterpreted.
Early life
Childhood: 1890–1907
Mortimer Wheeler was born on 10 September 1890 in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. He was the first child of the journalist Robert Mortimer Wheeler and his second wife Emily Wheeler. The son of a tea merchant based in Bristol, in youth Robert had considered becoming a Baptist minister, but instead became a staunch freethinker while studying at the University of Edinburgh. Initially working as a lecturer in English literature, Robert turned to journalism after his first wife died in childbirth. His second wife, Emily, shared her husband's interest in English literature, and was the niece of Thomas Spencer Baynes, a Shakespearean scholar at St. Andrews University. Their marriage was emotionally strained, a situation exacerbated by their financial insecurity. Within two years of their son's birth, the family moved to Edinburgh, where a daughter named Amy was born.File:Ilkley Moor Swastika Stone.jpg|left|thumb|upright=1.4|During childhood, Wheeler took an interest in the prehistoric carvings on Ilkley Moor in West Yorkshire.
When Wheeler was four, his father was appointed chief leader writer for the Bradford Observer. The family relocated to Saltaire, a village northwest of Bradford, a cosmopolitan city in Yorkshire, northeast England, then in the midst of the wool trade boom. Wheeler was inspired by the moors surrounding Saltaire and fascinated by the area's archaeology. He later wrote about discovering a late prehistoric cup-marked stone, searching for lithics on Ilkley Moor, and digging into a barrow on Baildon Moor. Although in ill health, Emily Wheeler taught her two children with the help of a maid up to the age of seven or eight. Mortimer remained emotionally distant from his mother, instead being far closer to his father, whose company he favoured over that of other children.
His father had a keen interest in natural history and a love of fishing and shooting, rural pursuits in which he encouraged Mortimer to take part. Robert acquired many books for his son, particularly on the subject of art history, with Wheeler loving to both read and paint.
In 1899, Wheeler joined Bradford Grammar School shortly before his ninth birthday, where he proceeded straight to the second form. In 1902, Robert and Emily had a second daughter, whom they named Betty; Mortimer showed little interest in this younger sister. In 1905, Robert agreed to take over as head of the London office of his newspaper, by then renamed the Yorkshire Daily Observer, so the family relocated to the southeast of the city in December 1905, settling into a house named Carlton Lodge on South Croydon Road, West Dulwich. In 1908, they moved to 14 Rollescourt Avenue in nearby Herne Hill. Rather than being sent for a conventional education, when he was 15 Wheeler was instructed to educate himself by spending time in London, where he frequented the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
University and early career: 1907–14
After passing the entrance exam on his second attempt, in 1907 Wheeler was awarded a scholarship to read classical studies at University College London, commuting daily from his parental home to the university campus in Bloomsbury, central London. At UCL, he was taught by the prominent classicist A. E. Housman. During his undergraduate studies, he became editor of the Union Magazine, for which he produced a number of illustrated cartoons. Increasingly interested in art, he decided to switch from classical studies to a course at UCL's art school, the Slade School of Fine Art; he returned to his previous subject after coming to the opinion that – in his words – he never became more than "a conventionally accomplished picture maker". This interlude had adversely affected his classical studies, and he received a second class BA on graduating.Wheeler began studying for a Master of Arts degree in classical studies, which he attained in 1912. During this period, he also gained employment as the personal secretary of the UCL Provost Gregory Foster, although he later criticised Foster for transforming the university from "a college in the truly academic sense a hypertrophied monstrosity as little like a college as a plesiosaurus is like a man". It was also at this time of life that he met and began a relationship with Tessa Verney, a student then studying history at UCL, when they were both serving on the committee of the University College Literary Society.
During his studies, Wheeler had developed his love of archaeology, having joined an excavation of Viroconium Cornoviorum, a Romano-British settlement in Wroxeter, in 1913. Considering a profession in the discipline, he won a studentship that had been established jointly by the University of London and the Society of Antiquaries in memory of Augustus Wollaston Franks. The prominent archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans doubled the amount of money that went with the studentship. Wheeler's proposed project had been to analyse Romano-Rhenish pottery, and with the grant he funded a trip to the Rhineland in Germany, there studying the Roman pottery housed in local museums; his research into this subject was never published.
At this period, there were very few jobs available within British archaeology; as the later archaeologist Stuart Piggott related, "the young Wheeler was looking for a professional job where the profession had yet to be created." In 1913 Wheeler secured a position as junior investigator for the English Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, who were embarking on a project to assess the state of all structures in the nation that pre-dated 1714. As part of this, he was first sent to Stebbing in Essex to assess Late Medieval buildings, although once that was accomplished he focused on studying the Romano-British remains of that county. In summer 1914, he married Tessa in a low-key, secular wedding ceremony, before they moved into Wheeler's parental home in Herne Hill.
First World War: 1914–1918
After the United Kingdom's entry into World War I in 1914, Wheeler volunteered for the armed forces. Although preferring solitary to group activities, Wheeler found that he greatly enjoyed soldiering, and on 9 November 1914 was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant in the University of London Officer Training Corps, serving with its artillery unit as an instructor. It was during this period, in January 1915, that a son was born to the Wheelers, and named Michael. Michael Wheeler was their only child, something that was a social anomaly at the time, although it is unknown whether or not this was by choice. In May 1915, Wheeler transferred to the 1st Lowland Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, and was confirmed in his rank on 1 July, with a promotion to temporary lieutenant from the same date. Shortly thereafter, on 16 July, Wheeler was promoted to temporary captain. In this position he was stationed at various bases across Britain, often bringing his wife and child with him; his responsibility was as a battery commander, initially of field guns and later of howitzers.In October 1917 Wheeler was posted to the 76th Army Field Artillery Brigade, one of the Royal Field Artillery brigades under the direct control of the General Officer Commanding, Third Army. The brigade was then stationed in Belgium, where it had been engaged in the Battle of Passchendaele against German troops along the Western Front. By now a substantive lieutenant, on 7 October he was appointed second-in-command of an artillery battery with the acting rank of captain, but on 21 October became commander of a battery with the acting rank of major, replacing a major who had been poisoned by mustard gas. He was part of the Left Group of artillery covering the advancing Allied infantry in the battle. Throughout, he maintained correspondences with his wife, his sister Amy, and his parents. After the Allied victory in the battle, the brigade was transferred to Italy.
Wheeler and the brigade arrived in Italy on 20 November, and proceeded through the Italian Riviera to reach Caporetto, where it had been sent to bolster the Italian troops against a German and Austro-Hungarian advance. As the Russian Republic removed itself from the war, the German Army refocused its efforts on the Western Front, so in March 1918 Wheeler's brigade was ordered to leave Italy, getting a train from Castelfranco to Vieux Rouen in France. Back on the Western Front, the brigade was assigned to the 2nd Division, again part of Julian Byng's Third Army, reaching a stable area of the front in April. Here, Wheeler was engaged in artillery fire for several months, before the British went on the offensive in August. On 24 August, between the ruined villages of Achiet and Sapignies, he led an expedition that captured two German field guns while under heavy fire from a castle mound; he was later awarded the Military Cross for this action:
Wheeler continued as part of the British forces pushing westward until the German surrender in November 1918, receiving a mention in dispatches on 8 November. He was not demobilised for several months, instead being stationed at Pulheim in Germany until March; during this time he wrote up his earlier research on Romano-Rhenish pottery, making use of access to local museums, before returning to London in July 1919. Reverting to his permanent rank of lieutenant on 16 September, Wheeler was finally discharged from service on 30 September 1921, retaining the rank of major.