Northamptonshire Archaeological Society was founded in 1974 and produced its first bound journal, Northamptonshire Archaeology, at the end of that year. 

By the autumn of the 1976 it was also issuing a calendar of events to members twice a year.  (If there were any earlier editions we do not have copies in the society files).  This calendar soon became a became a newsletter and calendar, and it has covered these two aspects ever since.

While format, content and means of distribution have changed over the years, the process of passing on relevant information by newsletters of one form or another now spans six decades and some fifty years.  Such newsletters could be regarded as just unimportant society ephemera, designed to pass on matters of only immediate interest to our members, and therefore not worthy of archiving, distribution or re-reading today.

However, an alternatively argument is that retrospectively and cumulatively they now provide an informal, but informative, archive that records the history and evolution of the society and of the many people involved in running it. 

In providing details about excavations, people and meetings of both the society and the many local archaeological societies and professional archaeological units that have operated within the county, the newsletters also provide a broader record (albeit unsystematic and incomplete) of the many changes that have occurred in the organisation and financing of archaeology across those six decades.

A deeper, and illustrated, voyage into the actual contents of the newsletters will be provided in volume 43 of the journal, but why not dip in yourself, perhaps a decade at a time? For me personally, it provides the story of my life as an archaeologist in Northamptonshire, as I arrived in Northampton in October 1976, the date on the very first issue that we hold.

Andy Chapman, July 2025