CBA Trustees

Trustee
CBA

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 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.

Honorary Vice-Presidents:

Dr Peter Addyman CBE: Former Director of the York Archaeological Trust & former CBA President
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 Trevor Steptoe
Mrs Jessie Williams
Mr Peter Pickering
Mrs Jill Polak

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.

Ms Helen Maclagan

Helen currently works freelance, following early retirement from Warwickshire County Council (as Head of Heritage and Culture) in 2010. Previously she headed the Warwickshire Museum Service; before that, during 20 years as County Archaeologist, she was active in many archaeological bodies and a chair of the (then) Association of County Archaeological Officers. She is a Member of the English Heritage Advisory Committee and a former Commissioner of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. Helen has considerable experience of historic environment policy, strategy, projects and casework locally and nationally, and has been active in the museum sector regionally. She has worked extensively with the voluntary heritage sector. Her interests include community engagement with the environment, sustainability in a heritage context, World Heritage Sites, and tangible and intangible heritage in relation to wellbeing. Since leaving full-time work, Helen is involved in a wider range of community and voluntary activity.

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.

Dr 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 Jim Thomas

I am a member of the CBA but not an archaeologist – more of an interested individual. My professional background prior to my retirement is in public service, working for both the UK and US Governments at a senior level. I have also worked in senior positions within industry in financial and commercial roles. I am currently a member of the CBA’s Finance and General Purposes Committee. I am a Chartered Management Accountant and can bring to the Trustee board financial and commercial skills, which are essential for charities navigating the current financial climate, and complementing the skills evident in the current trustees. I have good interpersonal skills and a wealth of experience dealing with people in all walks of life. I understand that the current treasurer of the Trustees is obliged to stand down at this election. With my extensive experience in financial management, I am willing to take over this duty if appointed by members.

Mr Peter Connelly

I have worked in professional archaeology since finishing my archaeology degree in 1993. Over the last 4–5 years, as the Project Director of the Hungate Excavations, I have directed the biggest ever excavation in York city centre. My archaeological career has covered a broad range of periods, skills and experiences. All of which I think will be instrumental in helping to guide the CBA through the archaeological landscape as it changes over the coming years. I have experience of dealing with multi-million pound budgets, have been heavily involved in archaeological training programmes since 1994 and I have key experiences in Community, Public, Outreach and Education archaeology. My current job also requires that I have business development and marketing skills. I firmly believe in Archaeology for All, which singularly reflects the CBA’s Mission Statement and I would like to think that my career has been one of participation, discovery and advocacy.

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.