The Story That Had no Beginning

The Rough Trade story begins more than thirty years ago on 20th February 1976. Britain was in the grip of an IRA bombing campaign; a future prime minister was beginning to make her mark on a middle England in which punk was yet to run amok; and a young Cambridge graduate called Geoff Travis opened a new shop at 202 Kensington Park Road, just off Ladbroke Grove in west London. The Rough Trade shop sold obscure and challenging records by bands like American art-rockers Pere Ubu, offering an alternative to the middle-of-the-road rock music that dominated the music business.

This six-part series presents the definitive history of archaeology, a 250-year worldwide odyssey that began with the unearthing of the ruins of Pompeii buried beneath the ash of Mt. Vesuvius. In a short time, archaeologists started pursuing very different objectives: some were treasure-seekers hoping to plunder antiquities of the ancient world; others sought to prove theories about the origins of civilization or the historical accuracy of Homer or the Bible; still others focused on humans themselves, trying to determine the age of the species. The series also looks at how archaeology has been misused as an instrument of foreign policy and where the study is going in the future with new technologies and methods.