Dr. Bernard Wailes was Associate Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Associate Curator Emeritus of the Penn Museum’s European Archaeology Section. Bernard was born in Mawgan Porth in Cornwall, and he received his education at St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, including his B.A. (1957), M.A. (1961), and Ph.D. (1964). He was a student of Grahame Clark, Raleigh Radford, and Nora Chadwick. Bernard joined the Anthropology Department at Penn in 1961 and served in a variety of different roles in the department and the University until his retirement in 1999. At various times he served as the graduate chair for Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, and Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. He also served as Editor of Expedition from 1978 to 1987.
Bernard is well known for his excavations at the Iron Age royal site of Dún Ailinne in County Kildare, Ireland, between 1968 and 1975. Several of us were fortunate enough to be part of the original excavation teams. The grants he received from the Ford Foundation allowed him to take us on tours of interesting archaeological sites all over the country. On weekends Bernard would lead us over green hill and dale to discover megaliths, raths (fortified settlements), country churches with carved stone crosses, Bronze Age barrows, and in the evening led us in drinking Guinness in the pub. Bernard published the final results of the Dún Ailinne excavations with Susan A. Johnston in a 2007 Penn Museum monograph, Dún Ailinne: Excavations at an Irish Royal Site, 1968–1975.
Bernard was a champion of later European prehistory and early medieval archaeology, and he made the case that these fields had much to contribute to the broader anthropological study of social evolution. He traced his intellectual lineage to V. Gordon Childe, whom he met in the 1950s, and in 1996 he published an edited volume, Craft Specialization and Social Evolution: In Memory of V. Gordon Childe.
Bernard received a distinguished teaching award from the University in 1996, and all of his students remember him fondly. He was a larger-than-life figure who was a presence at all the departmental events and who could discuss just about anything. One of Bernard’s intangible qualities was his willingness to put faith in young people whose abilities were unproven but who were eager and intellectually curious. Bernard created an inclusive, welcoming, joyful community— fostered by his irrepressible character and made real through the way that he allowed his students, graduate and undergraduate alike, to have their own meeting place in his office library, to present themselves as valued, thoughtful participants in his seminars, and to feel like their conversation with him was the most important and urgent matter at hand. He was a mentor without equal: deeply devoted to his students, thoughtful, kind, and the possessor of a wicked — and very British — sense of humor.
Bernard took a very real and personal interest in his students’ research and welfare, helping out wherever he could, and continuing this same genuine friendship and interest after we left Penn and became his peers. He visited many of us when we were carrying out dissertation research in Britain and Ireland. He did everything from lending one of us a car to taking another one of us to the emergency room. Part of Bernard’s great gift was that he never stopped mentoring.
Two of us were in Ireland at a conference a few weeks ago, and a number of people told us that they would miss Bernard, and that he had left too soon. We could not agree more. Bernard, may the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face. May the rains fall soft upon your fields until we meet again. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam (May his soul be on God’s right side).