Thomas Dowson Founder & CEO
After matriculating in 1981 I trained as an archaeologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. In 1994 I took up a position at the University of Southampton in England, where I set up the world’s first postgraduate degree programme in rock art studies. My research on prehistoric rock art was featured in a BBC documentary marking the new millennium that explored human evolution and what it means to be human.
In 2005 I moved to France, opened a B&B and offered archaeology tours. It was not until 2011 that I launched Archaeology Travel, providing information about archaeology for people who wanted to go beyond the iconic sites. Because of the global pandemic, and the time I had during lockdown, I began to think about the mission of Archaeology Travel in relation to the increasingly pressing and unavoidable discussions about sustainable development.
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My Background in Archaeology
Growing up in Zimbabwe, I lived on a farm just south of Harare. Not only were there archaeology sites on the farm, I vividly remember school trips to such places as Great Zimbabwe and the National Museum. My biology teacher inspired me more than my history teacher. So it is perhaps no surprise that when I went to university I chose to major in Botany and Geology. As much as I loved studying ecology, archaeology was still my passion.
After my first year at university I switched to archaeology. My area of interest was the cave paintings and engravings of southern Africa. My principal field of archaeological interest is prehistoric art. I have written numerous articles, book chapters, and books on the subject. Many of these have been aimed at a general audience, not only an academic one. One of my books, Rock Engravings of Southern Africa published in 1992 by Witwatersrand University Press, was the first book to offer a detailed interpretation of the petroglyphs of southern Africa. It was a best seller in South African bookshops for a number of months.
After working for about ten years at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I curated the first exhibition of San hunter-gatherer art in a South African art gallery, I moved to the United Kingdom to set up the world’s first postgraduate degree course in the study of prehistoric art at the University of Southampton.
Together with various colleagues over the years I significantly developed the shamanistic interpretation of rock arts around the World, most notably the Stone Age cave art of western Europe. This research was the focus of an episode of the BBC series Ape Man, which first aired in 2000 – a Millennium reflection on the origins of humanity. I have subsequently developed this interpretation further, ideas that are published in academic journals.
My other research interests include the contemporary significance of archaeology, and looking at the way in which our attitudes, values and beliefs today influence archaeological re-constructions of the past. A complete list of my books, chapters, academic journal papers and other articles can be found on my Google Scholar Profile.
My research interests have taken me all over the World, from Alaska to Australia, Argentina to Alta in Norway. After many years teaching archaeology to university students, and researching cave art, I exchanged academia for a B&B in France. Besides learning some great French cooking, I became aware of the lack of decent information about archaeological sites in Normandy for tourists. And looking further afield, when information is available the quality is inconsistent and in many cases misleading. In some regions there can be a number of different tourism websites, but often the information on the archaeological sites in an area are simple rehashed from one to the next. And hence the idea for Archaeology Travel.
Ape-Man - BBC 2000
Archaeology Travel Over a Decade Later
In 2011 I launched Archaeology Travel. This was still a time when information about archaeology sites and museums was not readily available on the internet. My aim then was quite simple, to provide information about archaeology for people who wanted to explore beyond the iconic sites. From early on I was asked by some PR companies and tourist boards to visit the region they worked for and write about the archaeology there.Â
Much has changed since 2011. On the internet and the planet. Now, even the smallest archaeological sites and museums have their own websites, Facebook pages, X accounts, regularly post photos and videos to Instagram and Tiktok. Websites are becoming more sophisticated. AI looks set to radically change the way we do a lot of things.
In 2020 we witnessed the start of a global pandemic. Everyone said it would change tourism for good. An important milestone for me, however, was the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, launched in 2015. Although many were already talking about sustainability in general and sustainable tourism specifically, the 2030 Agenda brought those discussions more mainstream.
In 2020 I felt I could no longer continue producing a website essentially encouraging people to travel without addressing what it means to travel sustainably. Particularly given I am in a niche, archaeology, that is under direct threat of climate change, over-tourism and natural processes of decay. It was being in lockdown that finally gave me the space to start thinking about how I can continue promoting tourism to fragile archaeology sites. There is a dilemma. Do we stop tourism altogether to some places? Or do we see tourism as a force for change? I tend to fall in the camp that sees the transformative potential in tourism. But there is a problem, one that is most noticeably seen in a 2023 report.
2023 is the halfway point for the 2030 Agenda. In May 2023 the UN published their draft progress report. Although the results are not good reading, the most damning aspect of the progress report is that it did not mention culture or heritage once. Not even in passing. Which is quite astounding if nothing else coming from a global organisation that has the largest and most well known heritage project on earth – the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
In 2023 we saw more an more incredulous acts of vandalism and destruction at heritage venues around the world. If our leaders do not take heritage seriously, can we really expect anyone else to? Fortunately not everyone thinks like our leaders. In survey after survey, results show people not only want to explore heritage in areas that ae not well known, while supporting local communities, they also want to take control over planning their own trips. These are the challenges Archaeology Travel now addresses.Â
