Trying to make the British School at Rome a focus for archaeological research in the western Mediterranean, Ashby appointed as associate student of the BSR Duncan Mackenzie, who had just worked with Arthur Evans at Knossos. Ashby and Mackenzie presented a joint paper on the ethnology of Sardinia to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in York in summer 1906 (after a joint trip there that June). This research area at the BSR dried up in 1909 when Mackenzie returned to work for the Palestine Exploration Fund in the eastern Mediterranean, though Ashby did make a return trip to Sardinia in 1912. Turning his attention to the British islands of Malta and Gozo and their possibilities for research on Mediterranean prehistory, and joined by T. Eric Peet for the 1905–6 session, Ashby visited Malta alone on various occasions in 1908 and 1909 and returned with Peet to excavate the sites of Hagiar-Kim and Mnaidra in 1910 and 1911.