CBA Trustees

Trustees oversee and guide the work of the CBA and help formulate our strategy. They usually attend at least four meetings per year, usually held in London or York, with two further meetings coupled with the Annual General Meeting and a liaison meeting for CBA Groups. Such meetings discuss and deliberate upon all aspects of the CBA’s work – formulating policy to further the CBA’s objectives in archaeological matters and managing the CBA’s affairs. Key functions of the trustees are to oversee the pursuit of the CBA’s charitable objectives, ensure that its funds are properly expended and are managed prudently, to decide on levels of delegated authority to staff, to appoint senior management and to act as the final point of appeal in internal disciplinary matters. The trustees are responsible for ensuring the governance of the CBA in accordance with its constitution.

In accordance with the CBA Memorandum & Articles of Association, the election of at least five trustees takes place at each AGM, in order to replace trustees who retire by rotation having served terms of at least three years. The CBA AGM is generally held in the autumn of each year to coincide with the CBA Weekend Event.

The CBA always aims to ensure there is a balance of geographical representation, gender, age, skills and experience within our trustees. Trustee Officers have additional duties. The President, three Vice Presidents, Secretary and Treasurer have more frequent contact with the Secretariat and are asked to chair meetings and advise on matters on a more frequent basis than the other trustees.

CBA Officers & Trustees

All CBA officers and trustees can be contacted via the CBA secretariat in York.

President:

Dr Kate Pretty CBE

Vice-Presidents:

Prof Marilyn Palmer
Dr Emma Plunkett Dillon
Dr Rowan Whimster

Honorary Secretary:

Mr Bob Sydes

Treasurer:

Mr Francis Taylor

Other trustees:

Dr Stephen Carter
Mrs Diana Maudslay Cross
Dr Joe Flatman
Dr John Hunt
Prof Siân Jones
Prof Chris Scarre
Mr David Stocker
Ms Katy Whitaker
Ms Jan Wills

Honorary Vice-Presidents:

Dr Peter Addyman CBE
Former Director of the York Archaeological Trust & former CBA President
Tony Blackman
Former CBA trustee and leader of the Cornwall YAC Branch
Beatrice de Cardi OBE
Former Secretary of the CBA
Dr Henry Cleere OBE
Former Director of the CBA
Professor Rosemary Cramp CBE
Emeritus Professor, University of Durham & former CBA President
Professor Barry W Cunliffe CBE
Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford & former CBA President
Dr Philip Dixon
Former CBA Hon Secretary & President
Professor Peter J Fowler
Emeritus Professor, University of Newcastle upon Tyne & former CBA President
Frances Griffith
Devon County Archaeologist & former Hon Secretary of the CBA
Mary Manning
Amateur archaeologist; special interests in industrial archaeology
Professor Richard Morris OBE
Former Director of the CBA
Paul Oldham
Former Hon Treasurer of the CBA
Dr Francis Pryor
Former CBA President
Professor Charles Thomas CBE
Former Director, Institute of Cornish Studies & former CBA President

Honorary Members:

Mrs Carol Anderson
Mr Frank Ball
Mrs Nancy Ball
Mrs Shiela Broomfield
Mrs Jean Dagnell
Ms Phillipa Henry
Mr Roy Friendship-Taylor
Mr Vernon Radcliffe
Mr Trevor Steptoe
Mrs Jessie Williams
Mr Peter Pickering

For further details on the rules governing our Trustees, please consult Articles of Association.


Trustee Statements

Dr Kate Pretty CBE

Kate started in West Midlands archaeology at the age of 11 and read Archaeology at Cambridge, her PhD thesis being on the West Midlands in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. For 20 years, she worked at Wroxeter with Philip Barker and has also excavated elsewhere in Britain, in Belize and in Australia. She is currently a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, with responsibility for international strategy and public engagement and still teaches archaeology part time. Kate also founded the Young Archaeologists’ Club in 1972. She has served on both local and national archaeological bodies and is a past Chair of the Cambridge Archaeological Committee and RESCUE, and is used to public lobbying and debate. Kate is also media-trained. Finally, as a Trustee of other charities, she is accustomed to charity law and financial management. She has been a Trustee and Vice-President of the CBA for the last four years.

Dr Rowan Whimster

For 20 years, Rowan worked as an aerial archaeologist, first at Cambridge University (from where he served as Secretary of the CBA Aerial Archaeology Committee) and then with the old Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. He then spent 10 years in the arcane world of policy, strategic planning and government relations, first at the RCHME and latterly as a member of the Executive Board of English Heritage. Finally, in 2003, he was able to move into a freelance life that has enabled him to reconnect with his professional roots. Rowan has served as a CBA trustee since 2003 and is a committee member of CBA Wessex and the advisory committee of the British and Irish Archaeology Bibliography. Since 2007, he has also represented the CBA on the Council of the National Trust and the Council for National Parks. Amongst his particular interests are the development of a new, broader definition of the role of archaeology in society, the electronic dissemination of historic environment information, and the strengthening of the role of the voluntary sector.

Prof Marilyn Palmer

Marilyn read history at Oxford, but came across industrial archaeology there at the same time that the CBA recognised the discipline and set up the Industrial Monuments Survey in the 1960s. Having taught industrial archaeology in adult education, she was eventually able to pursue it at university level and has worked hard to ensure its academic acceptance and to define a methodological framework for the study of industrial structures and landscapes within an archaeological context. Europe’s first Professor of Industrial Archaeology, she was Head of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester from 2000–2006, teaching post-medieval and industrial archaeology and the archaeology of standing buildings. Recently retired, she is now a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, researching the social impact of technological innovation on country house estates. She continues the CBA’s pioneer recognition of the place archaeology plays in the study of the modern world.

Emma Plunkett Dillon

Emma started to work for The National Trust in Wales in 1985 and now manages a team of archaeologists covering the West Midlands, Wessex Devon and Cornwall. In addition, she has responsibility for a portfolio of properties in South Wales including Dinefwr, where two overlapping Roman forts were recently discovered. She was policy officer for CBA Cymru/Wales between 1998 and 2006 and chairman between 2003 and 2006. Through membership of Wales Environment Link and as an independent voice, she has promoted the significance of the Historic Environment in Wales and the contribution that this can make to delivering the wider social and economic objectives of the Welsh Assembly Government. Emma’s appointment as a Trustee brings a Welsh perspective to strategic planning within the CBA and also to ensure that central policy and projects are more widely disseminated in Wales.

Mr Bob Sydes

Bob has been active in archaeology for over 30 years. He began his career on a number of major urban excavations in Northampton, Hull and Lincoln, before managing the South Yorkshire Archaeology Field Unit for eight years. In 1993, he moved to the curatorial side of local government and headed up the new development control archaeology service at Cambridgeshire County Council followed by a move to the Unitary Council of Bath & North East Somerset in 1996 as their Archaeological Officer, responsible for development control archaeology, policy and strategy. His current role as Heritage & Environment Manager for North Yorkshire County Council involves coordination of ecology, archaeology, building conservation, landscape and countryside management. Improving the evidence base, developing understanding and prioritising community delivery are the key drivers behind this work. He brings a broad range of skills and experience to the CBA.

Mr Francis Taylor

Francis has had an active involvement in archaeology at various levels for over 40 years. This has included practical fieldwork experience at various sites in the UK as well as lecturing on diverse archaeological topics and organising outings. From 1993 until his retirement in 2002, he was the President of CBA Wessex and remains on the CBA Wessex committee with particular responsibility for the controversial road scheme and visitor centre proposals at Stonehenge. Outside archaeology, he is qualified as both an engineer and an accountant and has served as a director of a number of manufacturing companies. He now runs his own management consultancy business, (though retirement beckons).

Dr Stephen Carter

Stephen works for Headland Archaeology, based in its Edinburgh office. His job is currently focussed on Environmental Impact Assessment and he is managing projects in Scotland, England and Ireland. He was chairman of the board of Archaeology Scotland (formerly CSA), CBA’s sister organisation in Scotland, until the end of his term of office in 2009. He remains an active member of the Institute for Archaeologists.

Dr Joe Flatman

Joe’s background is in medieval archaeology and art history. He was a member of first YAC and then later the CBA because of his interests in this subject, and subsequently went on to study for a BA, then an MA, and finally a PhD in archaeology, all at the University of Southampton. Since 2000, he has served on the Executive Committee of the Nautical Archaeology Society, giving him an insight into the working of organisations like the CBA. He is currently in the unusual position of being both the County Archaeologist of Surrey and also a Lecturer in Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, London. These dual posts mean that his expertise spans government and academic archaeology across the marine and terrestrial environments. Joe has a strong personal commitment to breaking down barriers in archaeology, be these internal barriers within the archaeological community or external barriers to public involvement. Joe is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and member of the Institute for Archaeologists.

Dr John Hunt

John is a medieval historian and archaeologist, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society, who also holds honorary fellowships at the University of Birmingham. He has served on the committee of the West Midlands Regional Group since 1988, with periods as Vice Chair between 1998 and 2004, and as Chair between 1994 and 1998, and from 2005 to the present. His professional career has been spent in Adult and Continuing Education in the West Midlands, working mainly in the voluntary and community organisation sector, experience which ensures both a substantial knowledge of how Regional Groups work and the challenges that they face, and an understanding of the world of voluntary organisations, and of the changing environment that CBA must respond to. John is also President of the Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society and a committee member of the Society for Landscape Studies.

Prof Siân Jones

Siân’s interest in archaeology began in the Isle of Man where she had the opportunity to work on the exciting Peel Castle excavations as a teenager. She then took a degree in archaeology at the University of Southampton where she became aware of the importance of archaeology in contemporary societies. She stayed at Southampton to do a PhD on Archaeology and Ethnicity (Routledge, 1997: ISBN 0415141583 | 978-0415141581). Following a brief period working for the CBA on the Publication User Needs Survey, she became a Lecturer in Archaeology at Manchester University in 1998. Her main interests now lie in the contemporary social value of archaeological heritage; an area which she strongly believes needs more development in this country. Having been co-opted as a trustee in 2006, she brings a diverse set of skills, particularly in the areas of education, publication, ethics, and social value. Siân has also carried out a wide range of fieldwork in the UK, particularly Scotland.

Mrs Diana Maudslay Cross

Diana is a 34 year old Barrister living in Leeds. She has had an interest in archaeology since childhood, having spent holidays touring English castles and Mayan ruins (having lived in Mexico during all of her primary school years). As an undergraduate at the University of Sheffield, she was able to take options in Heritage and Conservation Law, Environmental Law and Planning Law. These subjects, and her background, inspired her to enrol for a Masters Degree researching into the legal protection of cultural property in England and Mexico. She was awarded the degree in 2002, by which time she had become a barrister in mixed private practice. She now specialises exclusively in criminal law, primarily in environmental law and in benefit fraud cases. Diana keeps up-to-date with some of the issues in archaeology, although not her professional field. Her legal knowledge, both general and specific, are put to good use to help the CBA.

Prof Chris Scarre

As a member of the CBA for 30 years, Chris endorses its wide remit and values its public outreach activity. He was drawn to the archaeology of the North East in his teens, and subsequently studied archaeology at undergraduate through to PhD level, participating in a number of excavations in Britain. He went on to bring a Continental perspective to British prehistoric archaeology through fieldwork in northwest France and western Iberia. He has served on the Council of the Prehistoric Society and was one of the first editors of their newsletter Past. He moved to Durham University in 2006, and is particularly committed to conveying the message of archaeology to a wider audience (as, for example, in his recent textbook The Human Past ISBN 0500287805 | 978-0500287804).

Mr David Stocker

David’s experience of the CBA began as a volunteer in the 1970s and continued as a young professional working on buildings and excavations in York and Lincoln (as Hon Secretary to Research Committees; editor of Practical Handbook No 1). As an English Heirtage officer, he has worked towards building the CBA into protection measures for industrial remains and, more recently, to achieve CBA’s integration into revived structures for archaeological training.

Ms Katy Whitaker

Katy is an Archaeology and Anthropology graduate from the University of Cambridge. Having dug on both contract excavations and research projects, since 1997 she has been at the National Monuments Record (England). There, she provides access to archaeological data and archive material and the National Library of Air Photographs. Her particular interests include the history of RAF reconnaissance, the archaeology of North Wiltshire and experimental archaeology. She has also been a Young Archaeologists’ Club Branch leader since 1998 and a YAC residential experience leader since 2004, providing the CBA with a link to the many children who benefit from the CBA’s work. Public access is at the heart of her job at the NMR and she brings this focus with her.

Ms Jan Wills

Jan has worked as a professional archaeologist since the mid-1970s. Her early career was spent in archaeological fieldwork in the north and Midlands. More recently, she has worked in local government and as County Archaeologist in Gloucestershire where she currently manges a team delivering curatorial and fieldwork services. Other activities have included teaching at extra mural and postgraduate level. She has had a long involvement with local societies and currently chairs the county archaeology committee of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. Nationally, she has been involved with the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers for many years and has served as both vice chair and chair. This work has included representing the association in discussions with government on policy matters, including the review of PPG16 and the current Heritage Protection Review. Jan represents local government archaeology services on the regional Historic Environment Forum.