UCL Institute of Archaeology

The UCL Institute of Archaeology stands in Bloomsbury, London, on the north side of Gordon Square. The building dates from the 1950s and houses one of the world’s largest centres for archaeology, cultural heritage and museum studies. Over sixty staff and six hundred students work here, alongside collections of eighty thousand objects. The institute moved to Gordon Square in 1958 from St John’s Lodge in Regent’s Park. Its research spans five continents and the Pacific, covering fieldwork, laboratory work and theoretical studies. The institute’s history begins with Mortimer Wheeler’s vision of a British training centre in the 1920s. With his wife Tessa Verney Wheeler, he gathered funds and opened the institute in 1937. Early staff included V. Gordon Childe, Kathleen Kenyon and Max Mallowan. Directors have ranged from W. F. Grimes, who excavated the London Mithraeum, to Peter Ucko, founder of the World Archaeological Congress. Today the directorship is held by Kevin MacDonald, Professor of African Archaeology. Visitors find laboratories for conservation, GIS and environmental research, plus the Wolfson Archaeological Science Laboratories. The A. G. Leventis Gallery displays Cypriot and Eastern Mediterranean artefacts from ancient Cyprus, Greece, Crete, Egypt and the Levant. The institute’s library holds one of the world’s most extensive collections of archaeology and museum studies material. Students also produce Artifact magazine, and the institute publishes several journals including Archaeology International and Present Pasts.