Thomas Dowson Founder & CEO

Despite a strong dislike of history at school I went on to university to study archaeology, more specifically the cave paintings and engravings of southern Africa. 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. 

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 gave up the Ivory Tower and moved to France and ran a B&B and holiday cottage.

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 this website.

On Archaeology Travel I combine my professional expertise in archaeology with my passion for travel and sharing experiences with others to provide the definitive interactive guide in English to the archaeological sites and museums open to the public around the World.

My Research in Archaeology