The Iron Age open-air ritual site at Hallaton, Leicestershire: some wider implications

[From Introduction] I first met Vincent in October 1975 at a conference in Oxford on Iron Age oppida organised by Barry Cunliffe and Trevor Rowley. At the time, Vincent was Professor of Archaeology at Leicester, whilst I was a second year PhD student at Cambridge. On the Saturday evening, at a party given by Barry, I had an enjoyable and wideranging conversation with Vincent, of which I remember three aspects very well. The first, given our great difference in status, was just how friendly and informal Vincent was in an era when Professors were often distant figures. Second, I was struck and cowed by his encyclopaedic knowledge of the European Iron Age, with a scholarly command of its art and decorated metalwork (but by no means restricted to these), which I knew I could never match. Third, Vincent did little to conceal his scepticism for the theoretical ideas and approaches, which were then starting to gain ground in the discipline, and have retrospectively come to be known as processual archaeology