Richard Hodges is one of Europe’s preeminent archaeologists. He has transformed the way we understand the early Middle Ages, and has put the past to work for the present, through a sequence of paradigmatic excavations in England, Italy and Albania. Encounters, Excavations and Argosies pays tribute to him with a series of reflections on some of the themes and issues which have been central to his work over the last forty years. The contributors are colleagues, many his students, above all friends of the man whose ideas, example, trust, and loyalty have touched and inspired us all.

John Moreland took his first Archaeology tutorial with Richard Hodges at the University of Sheffield in 1977. Richard also supervised his PhD, and they worked closely together on excavations at Roystone Grange (Derbyshire), San Vincenzo al Volturno (Italy), and Butrint (Albania). He is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. John Mitchell first met Richard Hodges at Castel San Vincenzo in 1981, a jobbing art-historian dropping by to assess some excavated fresco-fragments, was hooked and has been working with him ever since, in Molise, southern Albania and more recently in Tuscany. He is Professor in the History of Art (emeritus) at the University of East Anglia. Bea Leal studied metalwork at Camberwell Art College and history of art at the University of East Anglia, finishing her PhD there (on Images of Architecture in Late Antiquity) in 2016. Her interests are in the art and architecture of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean, and especially the early Islamic period.