Joan Phyllis Garrod was born in 1930 in Wistaston, near Crewe, the daughter of Wilfrid Garrod, Inspector of Taxes, and Gwen Hodges. Joan was educated at Watford Girls’ Grammar School, 1940-46, and at Parkfields Cedars Grammar School in Derby, 1946-48. She came up to Girton in 1948 to read Modern and Medieval Languages (French and German). She played cricket for the Cambridge University Women’s team and gained a half-blue in 1949; she coxed the University women’s second boat in 1951; and she contributed drawings of Cambridge sport to Varsity and The Cambridge Review. Joan Garrod then spent a year as English assistant teacher in a girls’ Bundesgymnasium in Vienna, 1951-52. While there she met Andreas Schneider, a student teacher at Vienna University: they married in Derby in 1953 and had three children. The marriage was dissolved in 1968. Joan Schneider worked part-time from 1957 to 1992 at Dunstable College of Further Education teaching German, French, Local History and Archaeology, mainly to adults. From circa 1978 she also took courses in Local History and Archaeology for the Workers’ Educational Association. In 1988-89 she taught German for HLL Ltd and was part-author of HLL Deutsch, published in 1990. She took up the Welsh language and for a while taught a beginners’ group in Leighton Buzzard. From 1969-72 she also worked as a typist/secretary at Vauxhall Motors in Dunstable. Joan Schneider was an active member of the Manshead Archaeological Society of Dunstable from 1963 and was chairman of the society 1992-2000. In 1991 she became an Associate of the Institute of Field Archaeologists. She has written a number of works on archaeology and local history. [These notes are a shortened version of Joan Schneider's autobiographical notes at GCPP Garrod 3.]