While a postgraduate student of social anthropology, I learned of a people who believed that you could only go to heaven if your ears were pierced. Accordingly I had my ears pierced on New Year's Day 1970. It was a fortunate opening to the decade, for by the end of the year I was living with the Traveller-Gypsies who also pierce their ears, some say in order to improve their vision. But it was the Travellers who gave me a new vision and ‘heaven sent moments’.

My research for this study began as a project financed by the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust at the Centre for Environmental Studies between 1970 and 1973. It was directed by Barbara Adams. I am grateful for her initiative, advice and collaboration. I also benefited from the collaboration with my colleagues the late David Morgan, David Smith, Cathy Dean and Marie Welch. My main period of fieldwork, living on Traveller camps, was between 1971 and 1973. Follow-up fieldwork was carried out through the rest of the 1970s. From 1973 to 1976 I was supported by a studentship for a D.Phil. from the Social Science Research Council at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford. Drafts of this publication were revised and finalised while I was a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Durham where I was inspired by the many discussions with my colleague and friend, David Brooks.