J. Desmond Clark | |
|---|---|
 J. Desmond Clark (left) | |
| Born | 10 April 1916 London, England |
| Died | 14 February 2002(2002-02-14) (aged 85) |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Christ's College, Cambridge |
| Awards | Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America (1988) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | prehistoric Africa |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
John Desmond ClarkCBE FSA (10 April 1916 – 14 February 2002) was a Britisharchaeologist noted particularly for his work on prehistoric Africa.
Clark was born in London, but his childhood was spent in a hamlet in theChiltern Hills ofBuckinghamshire. Clark went to a preparatory boarding school in Buckinghamshire at age 6 1/2, from where he moved on toMonkton Combe School near Bath. Clark graduated with aBA fromChrist's College, Cambridge, underM. C. Burkitt andGrahame Clark.[1]
In 1937 Clark became the curator ofNorthern Rhodesia'sRhodes-Livingstone Museum (now known as the Livingstone Memorial Museum). A year later he marriedBetty Cable née Baume, who would accompany him on a number of expeditions throughout his life. Clark served in the military duringWorld War II with the East Africa Command forces in Somalia and Ethiopia, being subsequently attached to the British Military Administration,[2] when he managed to find time to carry out archaeological fieldwork in theHorn of Africa. Following the war, he returned to Cambridge, completing his PhD in 1947. In 1948 he founded the Northern Rhodesian National Monuments Commission.[2]
Clark then returned to Northern Rhodesia to serve once more as the museum's director. In 1953, Clark ordered an excavation atKalambo Falls, a 235m high, single-drop waterfall at the southeast end ofLake Tanganyika, on what is now the border between Zambia and Tanzania. The site would eventually emerge as one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century, providing a record of more than two hundred and fifty thousand years of human history. To date, artefacts ofAcheulean,Sangoan,Lupemban,Magosian,Wilton, andBantu cultures have all been found at the falls. Clark also undertook significant fieldwork in Ethiopia, Somalia, Malawi, Angola, and Niger, some of which led him to collaborate withLouis andMary Leakey.
In 1961, Clark resigned from his post as director of the museum (being succeeded by Gervas C.R. Clay[3]), and became Professor ofAnthropology (subsequently Emeritus) at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he taught until his retirement in 1986. Under his guidance, the programme became one of the world's foremost inpaleoanthropology. In 1965, he was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4] He received theGold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement in 1988 from theArchaeological Institute of America. Clark continued working until his death, including a 1991 dig in China that was the first to be led in that country by foreign archaeologists in more than 40 years. Clark died ofpneumonia inOakland in 2002, having published more than twenty books and over 300 scholarly papers on paleoanthropology and African prehistory in the course of his career. His wife survived him by only two months. He is survived by his children, Elizabeth and John.
Over the course of his career, Clark compiled a large scholarly library of scientific books and articles which he donated to his former students, archaeologistsNicholas Toth andKathy Schick, at theStone Age Institute where the collection is now housed as the Desmond Clark Memorial Library.
Clark was appointedOBE in 1956 andCBE in 1960. He was electedFSA in 1952 andFBA in 1961. He was a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of theNational Academy of Sciences (USA). He received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement in 1982.[5] His Cambridge ScD was awarded in 1975 and honorary doctorates at Witwatersrand and Cape Town universities in 1985, along with the Gold Medals of theSociety of Antiquaries of London (1985) and theArchaeological Institute of America (1989). TheBritish Academy awarded him theGrahame Clark Medal for Prehistory in 1997. He became an American citizen in 1993.
