The founding of the Seminar and the Society for Arabian Studies

Abstract

The idea of establishing in the United Kingdom some sort of group or association to promote the study of the archaeology of the Arabian Peninsula was first raised by John Dayton in April 1968, when he, Gerald Lankester Harding, and I were sitting in a Land Rover eating lunch (probably of the usual corned beef sandwiches) and sheltering from a violent rainstorm somewhere between Qurayyah and al-ΚUlā in the northern Hejaz. But before proceeding with the story I must first explain what we were doing there.