to raise its standing in the archaeological community by the vigorous efforts of several distinguished officers in the second half of the nineteenth century. Under Albert Way’s directorship in the 1840s, the society began publishing its Proceedings, the predecessor of the present Antiquaries Journal. Way also compiled a classified catalogue of the society’s museum collection, which then consisted of about 400 items (Way 1847). After 1852, local secretaries were appointed who reported on finds in their areas, and the record was published in the Proceedings.

When A.W. Franks, keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the british museum, was director of the society in the 1860s and 1870s, several important exhibitions were held in Somerset House, including a series on Paleolithic (1871), Neolithic (1872), and Bronze Age (1873) implements. Scholars with an international reputation, such as heinrich schliemann, visited the society and addressed its meetings. The society’s most outstanding resident secretary, William St. John Hope, was appointed in 1886, and he carried out some pioneering excavations of medieval ecclesiastical sites. Under the presidency of sir john evans (1885–1892), the society took the initiative to improve liaison between county archaeological societies by establishing the Congress of Archaeological Societies. In 1889, Evans established the research fund with a sizable donation from his own resources. Grants from the fund, the society’s support, and the expertise of its fellows have made possible excavations at many important British sites from Silchester, Hampshire, in the 1890s to sutton hoo, Suffolk, in the 1980s.

The government’s pressing need for accommodation for civil servants in Somerset House led to the learned societies there being offered alternative premises in the new Burlington House, Piccadilly, and when the antiquaries moved there in 1875, the society gained considerably more space for its growing library. The collections developed from a concentration on British topography into a major resource for the study of British and European archaeology, with complete series of all the main archaeological journals for the area helped by an extensive international exchange program. Purchases by the society and gifts by fellows and institutions enlarged the library to such an extent that it expanded into the former living quarters of the resident secretary when they became vacant in 1910.

The society has generally been more influential in private than in public in promoting the interests of British archaeology. In 1907, it encouraged the government to establish the Royal Commission for the Historical Monuments of England, and in 1944, it took an active part in the creation of the Council of British Archaeology to succeed the Congress of Archaeological Societies. Full reports of excavations of national importance could not be contained within the annual Archaeologia, and a separate series of publications, Research Reports, began with the results of the excavation of Wroxeter published in 1912. Most of the later titles also present the evidence from excavations supported by the society, and they include sir mortimer wheeler’s classic studies of Verulamium (1936), Maiden Castle (1943), and The Hillforts of Northern France (1957).

In the twentieth century, the Society of Antiquaries grew to over 2,000 fellows. Women were admitted for the first time in 1921, and they now form about one-sixth of the total. Almost half of the members are professional archaeologists; the remainder work in museums, universities, libraries, record offices, or heritage management or are amateur experts in their field. To reflect the two main strands of the fellowship, the convention has arisen in recent years that the elected president alternates between an archaeologist and a historian. The premises are used for regular meetings of the society, those of many bodies with similar interests, and conferences on archaeological and art-history subjects. The papers of some conferences have been published in a new series of Occasional Papers since 1980. The society is a registered charity because of its library, support for publications, and awarding of grants. It is also a registered museum because of its collections and ownership from 1962 of the summer home of one of its fellows, the artist William Morris at Kelmscott in Oxfordshire. The society’s interests are therefore multidisciplinary, but the contributions