Archaeologist Biographies S
Fuad Safar [d. 1978]
Iraqi archaeologist Fuad Safar of the Iraqi Antiquities Department excavated at Tell Hassuna, Tell Uqair and Eridu, among many other sites.
Marshall Sahlins [b. 1930]
American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins is perhaps best known for his definitive work in Polynesia, describing and refining the different political structures we humans build, something very useful for archaeologists.
Merrilee H. Salmon [b. 1935]
American archaeologist Merrilee Salmon is one of the few true philosophers of our profession.
Ali Sami
Iranian archaeologist Ali Sami was director of the Archaeological Institute of Persepolis during the 1940s and 1950s.
William T. Sanders
American archaeologist William T. Sanders is a Mesoamericanist, having recorded thousands of sites in the Valley of Mexico in his fifty-plus year career.
Karl Sapper [1866-1945]
German antiquarian and explorer Karl Sapper was fascinated by the natural and cultural history of central America
Ernest de Sarzec [1832-1901]
French consular agent Ernest de Sarzec is credited for discovering proof of the Sumerian civilization.
Louis Felicien de Saulcy [1807-1880]
French archaeologist Louis Felicien Joseph Caignart de Saulcy excavated at Baalbek and Jerusalem in the mid-19th century.
Ferdinand de Saussure [1857-1913]
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was interested in languages, written and spoken, and he believed that the basic rules of human languages are hard-wired into us, that the structure of language has rules that are for the most part unrecognized by the speaker.
Marshall H. Saville [1867-1935]
American archaeologist Marshall H. Saville was the first curator of the Mexican and Central American Archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History
Archibald Henry Sayce [1845-1933]
British philologist A. H. Sayce was an Orientalist of the old school, based at Oxford and primarily interested in ancient languages of Babylonia and Assryia.
Edwin Booth Sayles [1892-1977]
American archaeologist E.B. Sayles excavated at rockshelters throughout Texas and the American southwest such as Granado Cave and Eagle Cave and other sites such as Snaketown and the A. C. Saunders Site.
Edward Vincent Sayre [b. 1919]
Edward V. Sayre is a nuclear chemist who in the 1960s developed a technique for identifying the origins of the source materials of archaeological glass.
Claude F.A. Schaeffer [1898–1982]
French scholar Claude Schaeffer dedicated his life to studying the Phoenician city of Ugarit, in what is now Syria.
Josephus Justus Scaliger [1540-1609]
J.J. Scaliger was a French scholar of many parts when you could get away with such a thing, in the late 16th and early 17th century.
Linda Schele [1942-1998]
American art historian and epigrapher Linda Schele wasfirst and foremost an artist, but when she saw Palenque in 1970, she turned her remarkable talents towards recording Mesoamerican steles and hieroglyphs, most notably Maya stele.
Michael Brian Schiffer [b. 1947]
American archaeologist Michael B. Schiffer is probably best known for his impact on the field of behavioral archaeology
Heinrich Schliemann [1822-1890]
German archaeologist and adventurer Heinrich Schliemann was the excavator of Hisarlik, the location of the legendary site of Troy; also of Orchomenos and Tiryns.
Erich F. Schmidt
German archaeologist Erich F. Schmidt was at the Oriental Institute in the early to mid 1930s when he excavated at Persepolis, Rayy, and Luristan.
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft [1793-1864]
American ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft was influential in studies of indigenous people in the American continents, and did his best to dispel the myth of the 'mound builder'.
Adam Sedgwick [1785-1873]
Adam Sedgwick was a geologist teaching at Cambridge University in the 1830s when he hired a new field assistant named Charles Darwin.
Ulrich Jasper Seetzen [1767-1811]
German explorer Ulrich Seetzen was most interested in natural history, but he spent much of his explorations in the trans-Jordan area of the middle east.
Ernst Franck Max Sellin [1867-1935]
German scholar Ernst Sellin was interested in biblical archaeology, and although not a trained archaeologist, excavated at Jericho, Tell Ta`annek and Tel Balatah.
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda [1494-1573]
The Spanish priest Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda is best remembered an a participant in what must be among the most important debates in history, at least with regard to the Spanish colonies in Central and South America.
Elman Rogers Service [1915-1996]
American anthropologist Elman Service's 1962 book, Primitive Social Organization, contained what would become a blueprint for the cultural evolutionary movement.
Shen Kua [1031-1095]
The 11th century Chinese scholar, engineer, mathematician, astonomer, cartographer, politician, writer, and Go player Shen Kua was a phenomenal character.
Susan E. Shennan
In the mid 1970s, British archaeologist Susan Shennan conducted excavations at Unétice cemetery at Branč, Hungary.
Kathy Diane Schick
Kathy Schick is one of the pioneers of the study of taphonomy and related investigations of the Oldowan culture of Africa.
Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora [1645-1700]
Don Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora was a Jesuit priest in Mexico City in the late 17th century, and an illustrious scholar of the New World.
Yoshiko H. Sinoto
American archaeologist Yoshiko H. Sinoto has conducted excavations and surveys throughout Polynesia
Louis Siret
Belgian engineer Louis Siret first identified and excavated the Chalcolithic site of Los Millares, Spain.
Bruce David Smith [b. 1946]
Bruce D. Smith is currently the curator of North American Archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution, one of several other leadership roles Smith has taken in the fields of archaeobiology and archaeology for the general public.
Grafton Elliot Smith [1871-1937]
British Medical anatomist Sir Grafton Elliot Smith was a hyper-diffusionist; and a skilled and ground-breaking anatomist who worked on important paleontological studies including Piltdown and the Taung Baby.
George Smith [1840-1876]
English Assyriologist George Smith spent much of his early years in the British Museum, teaching himself cuneiform, where he came to the attention of Henry Rawlinson.
William "Strata" Smith [1769-1839]
English surveyor William "Strata" Smith was one of the rocks upon which Darwin built his theory of evolution (pardon the pun).
Olga Soffer [b. 1944]
American archaeologist Olga Soffer came to archaeology from a diverse background, to say the least.
Robert R. Sokal
Robert R. Sokal's research has included tracing the diffusion of farming by using genetics and blood groups.
Ralph Stefan Solecki [b. 1917]
American archaeologist Ralph Solecki is most frequently associated with the excavations at the Neanderthal site of Shanidar Cave.
Wilhelm Gerhard Solheim II [b. 1924]
American archaeologist Wilhelm Solheim II (Wilhelm I was a famous botanist in his own right) has spent his career studying southeast Asian archaeology.
Stanley A. South
American archaeologist Stanley A. South, currently at the University of South Carolina, has advanced the study of historical archaeology in the application of statistics.
Albert Clanton Spaulding [1914-1990]
American archaeologist Albert Spaulding was one of the first and staunchest users of statistics and quantitative methods in archaeology.
Ephraim Avigdor Speiser [1902–1965]
Polish-born Ephraim Speiser was an expert on Middle Eastern and Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, and was one of only a few scholars of the day that spoke ancient Hittite.
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler [1880-1936]
German historian Oswald Spengler's 1926 book, The Decline of the West, discussed his suspicions that Western civilization expressed by Europe was in a steep, inevitable decline.
Alexander Spoehr [1913-1992]
American archaeologist Alexander Spoehr conducted research in the Pacific Islands during the 1950s and 1960s, and is best known for defining the prehistoric ceramic culture known as Lapita.
Ephraim George Squier [1821-1888]
American journalist and diplomat Ephraim Squier became interested in the prehistoric American earthworks known as mounds while working as a clerk in the Ohio House of Representatives.
David E. Stannard
American historian David Stannard's tremendously influential 1992 book, American Holocaust, highlighted the true cost of the colonization of the American continent by settlers from Europe.
James Leslie Starkey [1895-1938]
British archaeologist James Leslie Starkey is best known for his work at Lachish, where he excavated between 1932 and 1938, when he was robbed and killed on his way to the site.
Julie K. Stein
American archaeologist Julie K. Stein is probably best known for her active embrace of the modern brand of empirical geological theory as a basic underpinning of archaeology.
John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood
John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood were a writer and an illustrator, who together explored the ruins of the ancient Maya in the 19th century.
John Lloyd Stephens [1805-1852]
American adventurer and author John Lloyd Stephens led a varied life, and is perhaps best known to archaeology for his travel to the exotic places of the world and his books about the people and the cultures he came across.
Vincas P. Steponaitis
American archaeologist Vincas Steponaitis is probably best known for his work on settlement patterns and site catchment analysis
Julian Haynes Steward [1902-1972]
American anthropologist Julian Steward was a leader of the cultural ecology movement, who actively incorporated ecology and archaeology into his theories.
Matthew W. Stirling [1896-1975]
American archaeologist Matthew W. Stirling was associated with the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution pretty much his entire professional career.
Chris Stringer
British paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer has taken a leading role in many of the earliest human origins debates.
David Stronach
British archaeologist David Stronach is recognized as a pioneer of archaeology in Iran.
William Duncan Strong [1899–1962]
Pioneer American archaeologist William Duncan Strong was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and was, for most of his career, associated with the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution and as a faculty member at Columbia University.
Stuart Struever [b. 1931]
American archaeologist Stuart Struever is undoubtedly best known for his investigations at the Koster site
William Stukeley [1687-1765]
British doctor and clergyman William Stukeley is most frequently associated with Stonehenge, because he was the first to consider the structure as potentially aligned with the solstice.
John F.G. Stokes
John Stokes was an American photographer, genealogist and archaeologist at the Bishop Museum in Hawai'i between 1899 and the mid-1920s.
Robert Carl Suggs [b. 1932]
American anthropologist Robert Suggs is best known for his ethnography-backed archaeological investigations in the Marquesas Islands.
Eliezer Sukenik [1889-1953]
Polish born archaeologist Eliezer Sukenik emigrated to Palestine in 1912.
Walenty Szwajcer
Polish high school teacher Walenty Szwajcer was the discoverer of the archaeological site of Biskupin.