Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler.

In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience.

[11] In 1905, Robert agreed to take over as head of the London office of his newspaper, by then renamed the Yorkshire Daily Observer, so the family relocated to the southeast of the city in December 1905, settling into a house named Carlton Lodge on South Croydon Road, West Dulwich.

[30] Although preferring solitary to group activities, Wheeler found that he greatly enjoyed soldiering,[31] and on 9 November 1914 was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant in the University of London Officer Training Corps, serving with its artillery unit as an instructor.

[44] As the Russian Republic removed itself from the war, the German Army refocused its efforts on the Western Front, so in March 1918 Wheeler's brigade was ordered to leave Italy, getting a train from Castelfranco to Vieux Rouen in France.

[46] On 24 August, between the ruined villages of Achiet and Sapignies, he led an expedition that captured two German field guns while under heavy fire from a castle mound; he was later awarded the Military Cross for this action:[47] For conspicuous gallantry and initiative.

[50] He was not demobilised for several months, instead being stationed at Pulheim in Germany until March; during this time he wrote up his earlier research on Romano-Rhenish pottery, making use of access to local museums, before returning to London in July 1919.

[62] Greatly influenced by the writings of the archaeologist Augustus Pitt-Rivers, Wheeler emphasised the need for a strong, developed methodology when undertaking an archaeological excavation, believing in the need for strategic planning, or what he termed "controlled discovery", with clear objectives in mind for a project.

[65] Over the field seasons of 1924 and 1925, Wheeler ran excavations of the Roman fort of Y Gaer near Brecon, a project aided by his wife and two archaeological students, Nowell Myres and Christopher Hawkes.

[103] While Wheeler – who was still Keeper of the London Museum – took on the role of Honorary Director of the institute, he installed the archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon as secretary of the Management Committee, describing her as "a level-headed person, with useful experience".

During his speech at the ceremony, the University of London's Vice-Chancellor Charles Reed Peers made it clear that the building was only intended as a temporary home for the institute, which it was hoped would be able to move to Bloomsbury, the city's academic hub.

[127] Wheeler had been expecting and openly hoping for war with Nazi Germany for a year before the outbreak of hostilities; he believed that the United Kingdom's involvement in the conflict would remedy the shame that he thought had been brought upon the country by its signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938.

[130] As the 48th swelled in size, it was converted into the 42nd Mobile Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment in the Royal Artillery, which consisted of four batteries and was led by Wheeler – now promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel (effective 27 January 1940) – as Commanding Officer.

[141] Back in Egypt, he gained permission to fly as a front gunner in a Wellington bomber on a bombing raid against Axis forces, to better understand what it was like for aircrew to be fired on by an anti-aircraft battery.

[154] Wheeler had been suggested for the job by Archibald Wavell, the Viceroy of India, who had been acting on the recommendations of the archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who had written a report lamenting the state of the archaeological establishment in the British-controlled subcontinent.

[157] Assigned a four-year contract, Wheeler attempted to recruit two archaeologists from Britain, Glyn Daniel and Stuart Piggott, to aid him in reforming the Archaeological Survey, although they declined the offer.

Through friends in the British archaeological community, he was offered a job as the Secretary of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, although he was upset that this would mean a drop in his professional status and income and decided to turn it down.

[202] According to Piggott, the institution had "unhappily drifted into senility without the excuse of being venerable",[203] and Wheeler devoted much time attempting to revitalise the organisation and ensured that Charles Webster was appointed president.

Based on the American quiz programme What in the World?, the show was hosted by Glyn Daniel and featured three experts in archaeology, anthropology, and natural history being asked to identify artefacts that had been selected from various museums.

[218] In 1959 he presented his own three-part series on The Grandeur That Was Rome, for which he travelled to Hadrian's Wall, Pompeii, and Leptis Magna; the show failed to secure high ratings, and was Wheeler's last major foray into television.

[225] In 1959, Wheeler wrote Early India and Pakistan, which was published as part as Daniel's "Ancient Peoples and Places" series for Thames and Hudson; as with many earlier books, he was criticised for rushing to conclusions.

[235] Wheeler had continued his archaeological investigations, and in 1954 led an expedition to the Somme and Pas de Calais where he sought to obtain more information on the French Iron Age to supplement that gathered in the late 1930s.

[237] In 1965, he agreed to take on the position of President of the Camelot Research Committee, which had been established to promote the findings of excavations at Cadbury Castle in Somerset run by his friends Ralegh Radford and Alcock; the project ended in 1970.

[245] According to his later biographer Jacquetta Hawkes, in doing so Wheeler raised the position of the academy to that of "the main source of official patronage for the humanities" within the United Kingdom,[246] while Piggott stated that he set the organisation upon its "modern course".

[257] In March 1971, the archaeologist Barry Cunliffe and a number of his undergraduate students at the University of Southampton organised a conference on the subject of "The Iron Age and its Hillforts" to celebrate Wheeler's eightieth birthday.

[281] Piggott stated that the "importance of Wheeler's contribution to archaeological technique, enormous and far-reaching, lies in the fact that in the early 1920s he not only appreciated and understood what Pitt-Rivers had done, but saw that his work could be used as a basis for adaptation, development and improvement.

No other archaeologist of the time, it seems fair to remark, could have come near to attaining his command of incisive strategy and often ruthless tactics which won him the bewildered admiration and touching devotion of his Indian staff.

"[287] Similarly, Peter Johansen praised Wheeler for systematising and professionalising Indian archaeology and for "instituting a clearly defined body of techniques and methods for field and laboratory work and training.

"[288] On Wheeler's death, H. D. Sankalia of Deccan College, Pune, described him as "well known among Old World archaeologists in the United States", particularly for his book Archaeology from the Earth and his studies of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

[290] However, writing in 2011, Moshenska and Schadla-Hall asserted that Wheeler's reputation has not undergone significant revision among archaeologists, but that instead he had come to be remembered as "a cartoonish and slightly eccentric figure" whom they termed "Naughty Morty".