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Brian M. Fagan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Brian Murray Fagan (1936-08-01)1 August 1936 |
| Died | 1 July 2025(2025-07-01) (aged 88) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Rugby School |
| Alma mater | Pembroke College, Cambridge |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Archaeology |
| Sub-discipline | |
| Institutions | |
| Website | brianfagan |
Brian Murray Fagan (1 August 1936 – 1 July 2025) was a British author of populararchaeology books and aprofessor emeritus ofAnthropology at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara.
Fagan was born on 1 August 1936 in England, where he received his childhood education atRugby School.[1][1] He attendedPembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied archaeology andanthropology (BA 1959, MA 1962, PhD 1965). Hisdoctoral thesis was titled "Some Iron Age cultures of the Southern Province, Northern Rhodesia, with special reference to the Kalomo Culture".[2] He spent six years as Keeper of Prehistory at theLivingstone Museum in Zambia, Central Africa, and moved to the USA in 1966.
Fagan was Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology at theUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in 1966/67, and was appointed Professor of Anthropology at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, in 1967.[3]
Fagan was an archaeological generalist, with expertise in the broad issues of human prehistory. He was the author or editor of 46 books, including seven widely used undergraduate college texts. Fagan contributed over 100 specialist papers to many national and international journals. He was a Contributing Editor toArchaeology Worldwide,[4]American Archaeology andDiscover Archaeology magazines, and formerly wrote a regular column forArchaeology Magazine. He served on the Editorial Boards of six academic and general periodicals and had many popular magazine credits, includingScientific American andGentleman's Quarterly.
Unlike most scholars at research universities, Fagan chose to regularly teach large introductory archaeology classes to undergraduates at Santa Barbara. Avoiding traditional lecture formats, he experimented with technology to provide basic information as early as the 1970s, leaving his class periods for wide ranging discussions of interest to students.
In conjunction with this interest in college teaching, Fagan began writing an extensive series of archaeology textbooks beginning in 1972 that are still in print in recent editions decades after their initial publication. These includeIn the Beginning (13th edition, 2013, with Nadia Durrani),People of the Earth (15th edition, 2018, with Nadia Durrani),Ancient North America (5th edition, 2019),Ancient Lives (7th edition, 2020, with Nadia Durrani),World Prehistory (9th edition, 2016, with Nadia Durrani),Ancient Civilizations (4th edition, 2016, with Chris Scarre), andArchaeology: A Brief Introduction (12th edition, 2016, with Nadia Durrani).
Fagan had been an archaeological consultant for many organisations, includingNational Geographic Society,Time-Life,Encyclopædia Britannica, andMicrosoft Encarta. He had lectured extensively about archaeology and other subjects throughout the world at many venues, including theCleveland Museum of Natural History, the National Geographic Society, the San Francisco City Lecture Program, theSmithsonian Institution, and theGetty Conservation Institute.
In addition to extensive experience with the development ofpublic television programs, Fagan was the developer/writer ofPatterns of the Past, anNPR series in 1984–86. He worked as a consultant for theBBC,RKO, and many Hollywood production companies on documentaries. In 1995, he was Senior Series Consultant forTime-Life Television's "Lost Civilizations" series. Fagan was awarded the 1996 Society of Professional Archaeologists' Distinguished Service Award for his "untiring efforts to bring archaeology in front of the public." He also received a Presidential Citation Award from theSociety for American Archaeology in 1996 for his work in textbook, general writing and media activities. He received the Society's first Public Education Award in 1997.
Over the years, Fagan wrote a series of well-known textbooks that provide accurate summaries of the latest advances in archaeological method and theory and world prehistory. These are designed for beginners and avoid both confusing jargon and major theoretical discussion, which is inappropriate at this basic level. His approach melds traditional cultural history with more recent approaches, with a major emphasis on writing historical narrative using archaeological data and sources from other disciplines.
Fagan was also well known for his public lectures on a wide variety of archaeological and historical topics, delivered to a broad range of archaeological and non-archaeological audiences. He wrote many critiques of contemporary archaeology and advocated non-traditional approaches, as well as writing extensively on the role of archaeology in contemporary society. His approach was a melding of different theoretical approaches, which focuses on the broad issues of human prehistory and the past. He was a strong advocate of multidisciplinary approaches to such issues asclimate change in the past.
An avid sailor from childhood, Fagan wrote sailing guides to many locations on the Pacific coast of the United States and published them under his own imprint. He retired from UC Santa Barbara, where he lived in the Santa Barbara area with his wife, one of his two daughters, and numerous cats and rabbits. Fagan died on 1 July 2025, at the age of 88.[5]
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