Richard Goodchild

In 1953 he was appointed head of the antique service for the province of Cyrenaica by the royal Libyan government. He held this position until 1966. In 1967 he was appointed professor of archaeology for the Roman provinces at the University of London.

From 1946 to 1948 Goodchild worked for the British military administration as head of the antique collection in the Italian province of Tripolitania. There he met Olwen Brogan again and began his longstanding collaboration with the archaeologist John Bryan Ward-Perkins (1912-1981), who had been the director of the British School in Rome since 1945. In 1947 Goodchild was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. From 1948 to 1953 he worked as a librarian at the British School in Rome. During this activity, he was always on vacation in Tripolitania to help preserve the ancient cultural heritage on a tight budget. He also carried out surveying work on the ancient sites and conducted excavations in the hinterland. In addition, he led several expeditions to southern Tripolitania. In order to create a map of Roman Libya, he expanded his research area to Cyrenaica and Syrtica. The resulting two sheets for the research project Tabula Imperii Romani were published by the Society of Antiquaries of London after their completion.

In 1939 Goodchild along with A.W.G. Lowther excavated the Romano-Celtic Temple on Farley Heath in Surrey

Goodchild's interest in archaeology was raised as a schoolboy at Cranleigh School, an independent boarding school in Surrey. From 1936, he attended the University of Oxford to study history. There he got to know the University of Oxford Archaeological Society who undertook excavations in the area around Oxford. During one of these excavations, Goodchild learned, among others, the archaeologist Olwen Brogan (1900–1989) and the later pioneer of aerial archaeology, John Bradford (1918-1975). While still a student, Goodchild and Bradford excavated the Gallo-Roman temple of Frilford in Oxfordshire.

Richard George Goodchild (born 18 July 1918 in Exeter, died 18 February 1968 in London) was a British provincial Roman archaeologist. He was one of the pioneers of archaeology in Libya.