92 Facts About Grahame Clark

Grahame Clark spent most of his career working at the University of Cambridge, where he was appointed Disney Professor of Archaeology from 1952 to 1974 and Master of Peterhouse from 1973 to 1980.

Grahame Clark was a senior member of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia and played an instrumental role in transforming it into The Prehistoric Society in 1935.

Grahame Clark served as the editor of its academic journal, the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, from 1933 until 1970.

Grahame Clark remained in Britain, working on aerial reconnaissance, and wrote further archaeological research articles in his spare time.

Grahame Clark was not a popular figure among the British archaeological community, being regarded as a competitive and remote individual who craved recognition.

Grahame Clark was nevertheless regarded as one of the most important prehistorians of his generation.

Grahame Clark was particularly noted for his emphasis on exploring the economies and environmental conditions of prehistoric Europe.

Grahame Clark's career was recognised by a number of accolades, including the Dutch Erasmus Prize and a British knighthood, and he was the subject of a posthumous biography by Brian Fagan.

John Grahame Douglas Clark was born on 28 July 1907.

Grahame Clark was the eldest son of Maude Ethel Grahame Clark and Charles Douglas Clark, the latter being a stockbroker and a reserve officer in the British Army.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Charles Grahame Clark joined the West Kent Regiment and was sent to fight overseas.

Grahame Clark survived the war, but during his return to Britain in 1919 succumbed to the influenza pandemic and died mid-journey.

Grahame Clark grew up without a father, instead being raised by his mother and an uncle for whom he had great affection.

Grahame Clark's family moved to Seaford, a coastal town on the edge of the Sussex Downs, with the young Clark developing a fascination with the prehistoric flint tools that he collected on the Downs.

In 1921 Grahame Clark began an education at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, where he joined the school's Natural History Society.

One was the University of Oxford, although Grahame Clark was unsuccessful in attaining a scholarship to attend St John's College, Oxford.

Grahame Clark began his degree in 1927, and during his first two years was enrolled on the history tripos.

Grahame Clark attended lectures by economic historians like Michael Postan, which would influence his later archaeological approach to the economies of prehistoric societies.

In 1928, Grahame Clark began his studies in archaeology, which was then taught alongside physical anthropology and social anthropology within the university's anthropology department.

Grahame Clark visited a number of Mortimer Wheeler's excavations, although never worked on them.

Grahame Clark then registered as a doctoral student, being awarded a Hugo de Balsham studentship at Peterhouse from 1930 to 1932, and then a Bye Fellowship from 1932 to 1935.

Grahame Clark initially familiarised himself with the evidence for Mesolithic society in continental Europe by travelling to Denmark and Sweden in 1929, where he had a chance meeting with Sophus Muller.

The Mesolithic Age in Britain formed the core of Grahame Clark's completed thesis, which was titled "The Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Early Metal Age Industries in Britain" and submitted in January 1934.

Grahame Clark served as the group's honorary secretary, and under him all of the Committee's research projects would be promptly written up and published.

In February 1932, Grahame Clark was elected to the council of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, and in May 1933 became acting editor of the society's Proceedings at Childe's recommendation.

Previously, in February 1933, Burkitt had ensured that Grahame Clark was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Grahame Clark himself was however unpopular in many archaeological circles, a result of what his later biographer Brian Fagan described as Grahame Clark's tendency to be "extremely critical, even cruel" toward others.

Grahame Clark arranged for undergraduate members of the Field Unit to assist him in his March 1935 excavations at Mildenhall Fen, where they discovered a wealth of Bronze Age material.

In February 1935, Grahame Clark had suggested that the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia rename itself as the Prehistoric Society, thus stretching its remit far beyond East Anglia.

Grahame Clark encouraged archaeologists working on non-British prehistory to submit to the journal, and met with the prominent French archaeologist Henri Breuil on the latter's visit to Cambridge.

Mollie and Grahame Clark were recruited by Charles Phillips to excavate the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 ship in 1939.

The book established Grahame Clark as being at the forefront of Mesolithic archaeology, and was hailed as an important and trend-setting tome which would influence generations of Mesolithic archaeologists before eventually becoming outdated due to more detailed research.

Grahame Clark condemned the use of archaeology in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, claiming that they used archaeology to promote a "diseased nationalism".

Grahame Clark was then drafted into the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as a pilot officer, being posted to the central interpretative unit at RAF Medmenham.

Grahame Clark used his daily commute from Cambridge into central London to edit articles submitted for the Proceedings.

Grahame Clark read omnivorously and produced a steady stream of academic articles in this period.

Grahame Clark returned to Cambridge University where he was appointed full lecturer in archaeology, with the department now under the leadership of Garrod.

Grahame Clark looked at the technologies and techniques of rural and fishing communities in much of Scandinavia, displaying his interest in the relationship between folk culture and ecology.

Grahame Clark expanded the length of the Proceedings in the years following the war, now aided by Piggott and Kenneth Oakley as his editorial assistants.

Grahame Clark applied to succeed him, although the position was instead given to Piggott.

Piggott then invited Grahame Clark to give the Munro Lectures at Edinburgh in 1949.

At the college he befriended his colleague Michael Postan, an economic historian whose research into Medieval farming techniques inspired Grahame Clark to reassess Neolithic farming.

Grahame Clark had been very impressed with Gerhard Bersu's excavation of the Iron Age settlement of Little Woodbury in Wiltshire in 1938 and 1939.

An amateur archaeologist had found early Iron Age pottery on Micklemoor Hill near West Harling in Norfolk, and Grahame Clark began an excavation of the site in 1948.

In 1948, Grahame Clark was informed about a Mesolithic flint scatter that had been found in peaty deposits at Seamer Carr in North Yorkshire by an amateur archaeologist, John Moore.

Grahame Clark oversaw three seasons of excavation at the site, in the summers of 1949,1950, and 1951.

Grahame Clark published his results promptly, bringing out preliminary reports in the 1949 and 1950 editions of the Proceedings.

In 1952, Garrod took an early retirement and Grahame Clark was selected as her replacement for the Disney Chair.

Grahame Clark failed to obtain many resources for the department from the university administration, with the department therefore remaining small under his tenure.

Grahame Clark did however acquire funds to hire a research assistant, the first being Eric Higgs.

Grahame Clark got on with some of his staff, such as John Coles and McBurney, although not with others, such as Glyn Daniel.

Grahame Clark oversaw two further seasons of excavation in 1952 and 1953, which was mostly overseen by Clare Fell, the assistant curator at the Museum of Archaeology.

In 1954, Grahame Clark was made aware of Neolithic pottery and worked flints that had been discovered through an excavation at Hurst Fen near Mildenhall in Suffolk.

Grahame Clark was disappointed that he excavation revealed a number of scatters post-holes and pits but no structures.

At the event Grahame Clark met the American archaeologist Gordon Willey, who became his good friend.

In 1959, Grahame Clark was elected President of the Prehistoric Society.

In 1960, Grahame Clark returned to Peacock Farm to oversee a small excavation designed to recover material that could be subjected to the newly developed process of radiocarbon dating.

Grahame Clark grew increasingly interested in Greek prehistory, and gained a permit to excavate the Neolithic Nea Nikomedia mound near Veroia in eastern Macedonia.

Grahame Clark did not personally lead the excavation, which took place in 1961, instead leaving that to his student Robert Rodden, who was assisted by fellow students like David L Clarke, Charles Higham, and Colin Renfrew.

Grahame Clark then furthered his interest in south-eastern Europe by writing an article for the Proceedings which synthesised newly discovered radiocarbon dates to argue that farming originally spread across Europe from Greece and the Western Balkans.

In early 1964, Grahame Clark made his first visit to the Antipodes as he spent time as the William Evans Professor at Otago University in New Zealand, using the opportunity to learn more about Maori prehistory.

Grahame Clark visited Vincent Megaw's excavation of the Curracurrang rock shelter and was taken by Norman Tindale to witness a living hunter-gatherer society at the Papunya indigenous community.

That year Hutchinson published a book that Grahame Clark had co-written with Piggott, Prehistoric Societies, and in 1967 Thames and Hudson published Grahame Clark's coffee table book, The Stone Age Hunters.

Grahame Clark published a classification system of five "lithic modes" or types of stone tools in 1969, which is still in use today.

In 1972, Grahame Clark spent time at Uppsala University as a visiting professor.

That same year, Grahame Clark returned to the subject of Star Carr to publish a book for undergraduate students, Star Carr: A Case Study in Bioarchaeology.

Towards the end of his career, Grahame Clark was given a range of awards in recognition of his research output: the Smithsonian Institution's Hodgkins Medal in 1967, the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Viking Fund Medal in 1971, Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971, the University of Pennsylvania's Lucy Wharton old Medal in 1974, the Society of Antiquaries' Gold Medal in 1978, and the Asiatic Society's Chandra Medal in 1979.

Grahame Clark then produced a sequel, Symbols of Excellence, which allowed him to discuss his interest in art; it was published by Cambridge University Press in 1986.

Grahame Clark began as an archaeologist interested in the use, manufacture, and distribution of implements but quickly became an archaeologist interested in the activities that the use, manufacture, and distribution of implements imply.

Smith believed that as of 1939, Grahame Clark had become a functionalist.

From 1972 onward, Grahame Clark became heavily involved in the use of newly developed scientific techniques for the analysis of archaeological material.

Grahame Clark nevertheless did not use such analogies uncritically, believing that they were mostly of use when there was a continuous historical link between older and more recent communities and where they both lived in very similar environmental conditions.

Grahame Clark stayed out of the theoretical debates between the processualists and adherents of older schools of thought, although in a letter to Coles expressed "distress" at what he saw as students forcing archaeological data to fit their preconceived notions.

Grahame Clark rejected the idea that archaeology was a pure science, claiming that this was misguided and " pathetic".

Grahame Clark was conservative, sometimes magisterial, even rude, but his archaeology was sometimes tinged with genius.

Physically, Grahame Clark was tall and thin, and in his personal life he was intensely private.

Grahame Clark was awkward around his students, who were often a little afraid of him.

Grahame Clark's biographer noted that his teaching was "at best pedestrian", and that he had a "reputation for poorly prepared lectures", rendering him unpopular as a teacher.

Mulvaney, who was one of his students, noted that in supervisory meetings, the "austere and busy" Grahame Clark "wasted time with derisory gossip concerning his peers, tainted with dogmatic political assertions".

Fagan noted that Grahame Clark was one of the four men who dominated British archaeology during the 1950s and early 1960s, along with the Edinburgh-based Piggott, the Cardiff-based Roger Atkinson, and the Oxford-based Christopher Hawkes.

Grahame Clark's relationship with these colleagues was mixed; Piggott was a lifelong friend, although Hawkes became his "long-term intellectual adversary".

Grahame Clark could be arrogant, was ruthless in his criticism of what he considered shoddy work and could be self-absorbed in his research and writing, to the point of rudeness.

In books like The Identity of Man, Grahame Clark promoted what he saw as the benefits of social hierarchy, viewing socio-economic inequalities as an impetus towards liberty and believing that unequal levels of consumption allowed for humanity's greatest artistic and cultural creations.

An elitist, Grahame Clark believed strongly in the importance of individual achievement and human progress, believing that humanity's future lay in the ability of people from different cultures and ideologies to co-operate in order to solve those problems that they had in common.

Grahame Clark had a love of dinghy sailing, and for many years had a houseboat at the coastal town of Aldeburgh.

Grahame Clark spent much of his leisure time visiting art galleries, and in later life he began collecting art, as well as Chinese porcelain and Asian jade.

Grahame Clark is remembered for his pioneering work in prehistoric economies, in the ecological approach, in the study of organic artefacts, in his initiation of science-based archaeology, in his various excavations and investigative projects, and in his world view of prehistory.

The historian Adam Stout noted that Grahame Clark was "one of the century's most influential prehistorians".

Coles noted that among continental European scholars, Grahame Clark was "the most respected British prehistorian" of his generation.

Grahame Clark's work was however little known in the United States, where it was eclipsed in the 1960s by the growth of processual archaeology.

The archaeologists Arkadiusz Marciniak and John Coles stated that Grahame Clark was one of the "eminent archaeologists" who helped to establish prehistoric archaeology as a "fully professional discipline" with explicitly outlined goals and methods and an institutional foundation.

Grahame Clark was a pioneer in ecological, functionalist approaches to archaeology, as well as the first archaeologist to write a global prehistory of humankind.