Brian Fagan. 2001. Grahame Clark: An Intellectual Biography of an Archaeologist. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado. 265 pp., notes, and an index.
Brian Fagan's book is a fascinating biography of Grahame Clark, a complex character who had an enormous effect on the science of archaeology. Born in England in 1907, Clark began life as so many professional archaeologists do--as an eager child collecting flints and arrowheads, nicknamed "Stones and Bones" by his early associates at the Natural History Society at Marlborough College. Fagan follows his subject's career as a student and eventual faculty member at Cambridge University, as well as his travels throughout Europe and the effect they had on the archaeologist's ideas about archaeology and theories about the growth of societies.
Fagan discusses the great impact of Clark's most famous works, such as the excavations at Star Carr and the still-relevant Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe published in 1936. But Fagan also takes an unflinching look at Clark's elitist tendencies, and because of this, the book is a tremendously enlightening glimpse into the roots of scientific archaeology, and thus the inborn biases that professionals all wrestle with today. This is a remarkable book, written in the lucid prose we've come to expect from Brian Fagan, and it should find a place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the underpinnings of the archaeological world of today.
