Archaeologist Biographies O-Q

David Oates [1924-2003]
Archaeologist David Oates was one of the excavators at Nimrud, in Iraq.

Jules Oppert [1825-1905]
French linguist Jules Oppert was best known for his work in decoding Assyrian cuneiform.

Paolo Orsi [1859-1935]
Italian archaeologist Paolo Orsi was director of the Museum of Sicily in Syracuse for thirty years.

Luigi Palma di Cesnola [1832-1904]
Luigi Palma di Cesnola was an Italian archaeologist of the 19th century who enhanced his early career as a minor diplomat by excavating in Cyprus.

Plato [427-347 BC]
The Greek philosopher Plato, while undoubtedly a great writer and philosopher, burdened the science of archaeology with the myth of Atlantis.

Pierre Paris
Pierre Paris was a French geographer/photographer who took aerial photographs of Oc Eo and Angkor Borei in Cambodia.

Asko Parpola
Finnish scholar Asko Parpola is a world-famous expert the written language of the Indus Valley.

Pausanias the Traveler [115-180 AD]
The Greek travel writer Pausanias left a lasting legacy with his guide book to the Greek civilization of the 2nd century AD.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
The Periplus of the Erythreaen Sea is an unsigned travel guide to the southern Arabian peninsula, written during the 1st century AD.

Andre Parrot [?-1980]
French archaeologist Andre Parrot was the main discoverer and excavator of the Mari State, overseeing excavations at the site of Mari, Syria, for a remarkable 40 year period between 1933 to 1974.

Jeffrey R. Parsons
Jeffrey R. Parsons is an American archaeologist, one of the pioneer investigators of the use of settlement pattern particularlyin the Basin of Mexico.

Thomas C. Patterson
American archaeologist Thomas Patterson's career has spanned some forty years and is probably best known for his work with the Inca and other complex societies, and the use of Marxist theory in archaeology.

Pausanias the Traveler [115-180 AD]
The Greek travel writer Pausanias left a lasting legacy with his guide book to the Greek civilization of the 2nd century AD.

Deborah M. Pearsall [b. 1950]
American archaeologist Deborah M. Pearsall has dedicated much of her professional life to the study of paleoethnobotany, specifically the examination of opal phytoliths in archaeological contexts.

Pei Wenzhong [1904-1982]
W.C. Pei was the founding father of Chinese Paleolithic archaeology, who excavated at Zhoukoudian in the mid 1930s.

William Pengelly [1812-1894]
William Pengelly was the British antiquarian who excavated Kent's Cavern in the mid-19th century, searching for proof of antediluvian man.

John Bryan Ward Perkins [1912-1981]
British archaeologist John Bryan Ward Perkins spent nearly twenty five years excavating in the Etruria region of Italy.

Isadore Perlman [1915-1991]
Isadore Perlman was a chemist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories when he engineered the use of neutron activation to the identification of the provenience of ceramic sherds.

Jacques Boucher de Perthes [1788-1868]
French customs officer Jacques Boucher de Perthes had a hobby that got him into trouble--archaeology.

John Punnett Peters [1852-1921]
American archaeologist John Peters was a nineteenth century scholar who excavated at Nippur.

Nicholas Peterson
Australian archaeologist Nicholas Peterson, with his colleage C. White, conducted archaeological research in Arnhem Land, applying ethnographic research on aboriginal tribes in Cape York.

Sir William Flinders Petrie [1853-1942]
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie was one of the pioneers of the science of archaeology.

Denis Peyrony [1869-1954]
French archaeologist Denis Peyrony excavated at Roque Saint-Christophe during the first decades of the twentieth century

Philip Phillips [1900-1994]
American archaeologist Philip Phillips was co-author (with G. R. Willey) of Method and Theory of Archaeology, one of the most important books ever published in American archaeology.

Philo of Alexandria [20 BC - ca 40 AD
Philo Judeaus was a writer and philospher, living in the town of Alexandria at the beginning of the Christian era.

Mau Piailug
Master navigator Mau Piailug worked with anthropologist Stephen Thomas on open-water navigation in Polynesia.

Edouard Piette [1827-1906]
Edouard Piette was a French archaeologist of the 19th century, who excavated at the paleolithic cave sites of Altamira, Mas d'Azil, and Brassempouy.

Stuart Piggott [1910-1996]
British archaeologist Stuart Piggott was Abercromby Chair of Archaeology in the University of Edinburgh for over thirty years, and is known for his work in Wessex, England, and in India.

David Pilbeam [b. 1940]
David Pilbeam is an American paleontologist currently at Harvard University, who has investigated Proconsul remains in Kenya and Sivapithecus remains in the Potwar Plateau in Pakistan.

Christian Pilet
French archaeologist Christian Pilet has investigated the cemeteries of Medieval Normandy for the past thirty years.

Pindar [522 BC–443 BC]
The Greek poet Pindar is probably best remembered by archaeologists for his odes written on the ancient sports festivals at Olympia.

Henri Pirenne [1862-1935]
Belgian historian Henri Pirenne was a medievalist who studied the expansion of Islam in the 8th century AD.

Jacqueline Pirenne [1918-1990]
French archaeologist Jacqueline Pirenne spent much of her career excavating in South Arabia, especially in Yemen and Ethiopia.

A. H. L. Fox Pitt Rivers [1827-1900]
Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers was an English archaeologist of the nineteenth century, who was tremendously influenced by Charles Darwin.

Pope Pius VI [1717-1799]
Pope Pius VI, born Giovanni Angelo Braschi, was interested in the new science of archaeology, financing the excavations of classical sites in Italy during the mid-18th century.

Francisco Pizarro [1471-1541]
Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca king Atahualpa in 1532.

Victor Place [1818-1875]
French archaeologist Victor Place was a nineteenth century scholar of Mesopotamia.

Plato [427-347 BC]
The Greek philosopher Plato, while undoubtedly a great writer and philosopher, burdened the science of archaeology with the myth of Atlantis.

Pliny the Elder [AD 23 - 79]
Pliny the Elder was a Roman writer and scholar whose Natural History pretty much defined science as it was known then--and not that different today.

Karl Polanyi [1886-1964]
in 1944, Austrian cultural anthropologist Karl Polanyi wrote his most important work called The Great Transformation, in which he argued that capitalism as a social phenomenon was an anomaly.

Polybius [200-118 BC]
The Greek writer and historian Polybius predicted the collapse of the Roman empire; and convinced his fellow Greeks that the Roman empire was inevitable.

John Wesley Powell [1834-1902]
Civil War veteran and American adventurer John Wesley Powell wandered all over the American west and southwest, running the rapids of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon at the age of 35.

Joseph Prestwich [1812-1896]
Joseph Prestwich was an English geologist and pioneer archaeologist who is best known in archaeological circles as one of the group who visited Jacques Boucher de Perthes and confirmed de Perthes' findings at Saint-Acheul.

James Bennett Pritchard [1906-1997]
American archaeologist James B. Pritchard excavated in Israel, Canaan, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon.

Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1909 – 1985)
Tatiana Proskouriakoff's researches into Maya hieroglyphs and the historical content of them led to the eventual translation of the Maya text.

Tatiana Avenirovna Proskouriakoff [1909-1985]
Russian born Tatiana Proskouriakoff was a pioneer archaeologist, who combined her facility in ethnohistory, art, architecture and archaeology to produce a remarkable written documentation of the Maya civilization.

Frederic Ward Putnam [1839-1915]
Frederic Ward Putnam was a nineteenth century American archaeologist at the Peabody Museum.