John Alexander studied history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, after which he became a teacher in the Sudan Education Service. He later retrained as a prehistorian at the Institute of Archaeology, London, and again at Pembroke College, which also awarded his PhD in 1958. He held various teaching positions in the UK, Ghana and the Sudan, and from 1980 to 1986 was co-director of the EES mission at Qasr Ibrim. He helped to found the Sudan Archaeological Research Society and served on the executive committees of the EES and the British Council of Archaeology. John Alexander died in 2010. William Y. Adams was educated at the Universities of California and Arizona, receiving his PhD from the latter institution in 1958. After early research in American Indian ethnography he turned his attention to salvage archaeology, directing river valley excavations in the United States and then along the Nile in the Sudan and Egypt. From 1959 to 1966, he was Director of Excavations in Nubia for the Sudanese government, and from 1972 to 1982 directed EES excavations at Qasr Ibrim. At the same time he served as Professor of Anthopology at the University of Kentucky, until his retirement in 1992.