Before Farming: the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers

Obituary

J Desmond Clark 1916-2002

These were the words used by Susan McIntosh in the dedication to her edited volume on excavations at Jenné-Jeno with Desmond's name at the head, and those sentiments must figure large in the feelings of those colleagues fortunate enough to have known him personally. His generosity of spirit and humanity found early expression when, at the outbreak of the last war, he declared himself 'in general opposed to the taking of life' and joined the 7th East African Ambulance Corps in which he served until the conclusion of the East African campaign. After a short posting to Madagascar he underwent officer training in Kenya before returning to Somalia as part of the British Military Administration.

But what of the man as archaeologist? Desmond was one of three early pioneers to come out of Cambridge between the wars, sharing among their teachers Miles Burkitt and, in the case of Desmond, Grahame Clark. John Goodwin (1919-1922) pioneered Stone Age studies in South Africa, Louis Leakey (1922-1926) made East Africa and the study of fossil man his particular province. But Desmond Clark (1934-1937) from a base as Curator of the David Livingstone Memorial Museum in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1938 expanded the range of his activities through the ensuing years until his research writings covered almost every corner of the continent and every period of the past, from the origins of tool-making to recent Bantu ethnohistory. In the 64 years of his active career, in addition to fulfilling his duties as Curator (later Director) of the museum and, from 1961, Professor in the University of California at Berkeley, he published at least 110 journal papers, book chapters, and distinguished lectures, as well as ten books or monographs, four edited volumes (including the massive Cambridge History of Africa vol I, and 700 page Kalambo Falls vol III, which appeared only a few months before his death), and four co-edited volumes. In many of these the artefact drawings are skilfully rendered by his wife Betty.

His early encounters with the Stone Age, in Northern Rhodesia and the Horn of Africa, clearly pointed the direction of his future interests, cemented by his discovery of the Kalambo Falls site in 1953. Accordingly no fewer than 70 of his papers as well as several of his monographs deal with various aspects of the Early, Middle and Later Stone ages, but most the Early Stone Age. They include excavation reports, the influence of environmental change on the development of cultures (particularly at Kalambo Falls), methods of dating fossil man, variability in Acheulian industries both within Africa and in comparison with the Middle East, problems of nomenclature in the Congo, Palaeolithic butchery practices, bone tools of the Earlier Pleistocene, use-wear on microliths, raw materials and lithic technology, early occupation of savanna environments, the role of fire in early hominid lifeways, to mention but a few.

Most of Desmond's fieldwork was in Zambia, but extended into Malawi (by invitation of the Government) and north-east Angola (at the invitation of the Diamang Diamond Company). But the early 1960s found him excavating an Acheulian site in Syria and, in 1970-71, with the British Expedition to the Central Sahara, and then the Upper Nile. This latter work marked a period of productivity with a number of papers on early agriculture in the Sahara, the Nile Valley, and the Sudan. Much of his time from 1974 was taken up with the Early Man/Africa Program at Berkeley and, more recently, the ongoing Middle Awash research project, the basis of a major co-edited monograph in 2000. From 1974, perhaps inspired by his visits to the Middle East, several of his papers reflect an increasing interest in the question of early man in regions beyond Africa. In 1980 and 1982 he was working with Indian colleagues on a late Upper Palaeolithic site in Madhya Pradesh, and studying the mining of agates, carnelians and cherts and their reduction to microblades, and the associated stone bead-making at Cambay on the opposite side of the continent. In 1989-90 and later in 1990 at the invitation of Chinese colleagues he became part of a team carrying out investigations in the Nihewan Basin where deposits span the late Pliocene to late Pleistocene, and somewhere along the line there was even a visit to New Guinea to study stone axe manufacture.

In amongst all this Stone Age work he nonetheless found time to write seminal papers on the pre-Bantu inhabitants of Zambia, pre-European copper-working in South and central Africa, the importance of distribution maps, the rock paintings of Zambia and Malawi, river craft and fishing practices in south east Africa, Early Iron Age pottery in the Zambesi valley, and two long and fascinating papers on ancient Egyptian bows and Bushman arrow forms as indications of prehistoric archery equipment. There was no limit to his enquiring mind and his desire to shed light on the past.
Through his writings, his teaching, his presence at every significant meeting of Africanist archaeologists, his enthusiasm, his generosity, and his insistence on the highest standards of scholarship he has inspired many among younger generations of scholars to the great advancement of archaeology in Africa. His influence and his scholarship will be greatly missed in professional circles, but no more so than by his wife, Betty, his son John, his daughter Elizabeth, and his grandchildren. He will be sadly missed.

Ray Inskeep

Oxford 21.ii.02