South Oxfordshire Archaeological Group was founded in 1969, by Cynthia Graham Kerr (1929 – 2011). It expanded very rapidly to include most of the activities that it undertakes to this day.
To find out more, please click on the image below – A Short History of SOAG – to download a document which describes the process by which this happened, documenting some of the key events, projects, partnerships, and people who drove it.
Mike Green, who joined SOAG in 2007, has written this first version of our history. Since joining SOAG, Mike has participated in many of its activities and he has also at various times been responsible for SOAG’s paper archives, where much of this history is documented. Several years ago, he also took the initiative of digitising records and archives so the details of SOAG’s past can become more widely available.
This history is inevitably selective, and is certainly far from complete. But it is hoped that it will give members a flavour of why and how the society they have joined became what it is; and can also be a starting point for local researchers wanting to pursue more specific lines of enquiry. This document is ‘a first draft’ and it is hoped that that other long-standing members of the society can lend their support in developing it into something perhaps more comprehensive.