Background
I am Paul Ingram (you can email me if you wish), I come from Portsmouth, am fanatic about Babylon 5 and cricket.
My first interest in the area of Archaeology was provoked by an enjoyment of English history and early literature, at school I achieved an A at O Level History and a B for Greek Literature in Translation. However I saw my future as a scientist and went on to obtain a BSc(Hons) degree in Physics with Physical Microelectronics from the University of Essex and pursued a career centred on Information Science within the electronics industry.
My choice of career and degree were certainly good ones but I felt them to be a little unrewarding and frequently lost interest. I had kept up reading and some study (History of Science - during my degree) of historical subjects and decided this would add the element of intellectual reward I was missing.
I decided the Oxford Univerisity Dept. Continuing Education Undergraduate Certificate in British Archaeology Anglo-Saxon Archaeology module matched my interests. Unfortunately the Anglo-Saxon module was not being run that year so I decided to take the Neolithic and Bronze Age module run by Paul Garwood.
I was quickly hooked on the intellectually challenging and rewarding archaeology and post-processual social analysis of that course. By the time the Anglo-Saxon module, run by Dave Beard, came round Archaeology was the thing and history and literature were on the back burner!