Reconstruction art and disciplinary practice: Alan Sorrell and the negotiation of the archaeological record

Alan Sorrell is best known today as a 'reconstruction artist', employed between the 1930s and the 1970s by the Ministry of Works and other bodies to produce reconstructions of ancient monuments and re-creations of ancient life. The archive containing many of his papers, working drawings, correspondence and other material was temporarily loaned to the Society of Antiquaries of London for study in 2010-11, and is now publicly accessible via the Sorrell family. This paper reports on initial research into the Sorrell archive and other documentary sources, funded through a British Academy Small Grant. We discuss how the archive throws new light not just on Sorrell's career and achievements, but on the intellectual and professional development of archaeology as a whole in the mid-twentieth century.