BAR was founded by Anthony Hands and David Walker in 1974, for the speedy publication and wide dissemination of works on British archaeology to a professional and academic audience. One year later the 'Supplementary Series' (hence the prefix 'S') later renamed the 'International Series', was established.

Following the death of David Walker in 1989, the production of new titles was taken over by Tempvs Reparatvm Ltd. from 1991-97, and subsequently by two organizations: John & Erica Hedges and Archaeopress, both based in Oxford.
Hadrian Books Ltd., successor to BAR Ltd., remains the sole distributor for both series.

During 1999 BAR passed the notable milestone of 1000 titles published. No series of publications in scholarly archaeology has ever reached this number before, and it will probably be sometime before anybody does so again. The policy of BAR remains unchanged: to publish scholarly works on all aspects of world archaeology in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, and to distribute them world-wide. We look forward to the production of the second thousand titles.

Anthony Hands
Hadrian Books Ltd.