ROGER PEARSE on the need to preserve archaeological photographs. “Archaeologists are particularly in need of a photographic archive. Their trade is one of physical monuments. You might think these are permanent enough, yet it seems remarkably hard even to locate them sometimes. I have been unable to discover the whereabouts of the finds from the Carnarvon / Caernarfon mithraeum, since the closure of the museum. Photographs would be invaluable… but of course I can’t make them if I can’t find the objects. Again and again in Vermaseren’s Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentum Religionis Mithriacae I find statements that such and such an altar is ‘lost’. And, let’s face it … archaeologists are notoriously bad at publishing excavation reports.”