Grahame Clark by Brian Fagan, Westview Press, Boulder, $26, ISBN
0813336023
CAN you write a sparkling biography of a dull person? In stressing that this
is an “intellectual biography”, Brian Fagan is perhaps conceding that the
challenge has defeated even his formidable writing skills and Grahame Clark
could be presented only via a chronological summary of his writings.
We learn almost nothing of Clark as a man—his tastes, his family life,
his beliefs. There are no humorous anecdotes or vignettes you’d find in accounts
of other major archaeologists, such as the effervescent Glyn Daniel or the
eccentric and ultimately tragic Gordon Childe. Fagan emphasises that Clark was
an austere, forbidding, remote and private figure. Even if, as he also stresses,
this masked an essentially kindly and well-meaning nature, cold fishes make poor
biographical material.
Advertisement
Clark was about as far removed from Indiana Jones as an archaeologist could
be. Fagan occasionally drops in adjectives such as “soporific” for some of the
writing and much of the teaching of this major figure in 20th-century
archaeology. In this warts-and-all account, Fagan presents Clark as a confirmed
elitist with few social graces, an apparent disdain for the culture of black
Africa, and a yearning for the Ancien Régime —in short, a classic
example of how background and education (in Clark’s case conservative,
traditional, public school) colour an archaeologist’s picture of the past.
Clark changed the shape of archaeology. He pioneered the environmental and
economic aspects of prehistory, and directed the important excavation at
Britain’s Star Carr, an early Mesolithic site in North Yorkshire. His
championing of the Mesolithic period in northern Europe transformed it from one
of the dullest parts of prehistory to one of the most interesting. He was
crucial in promoting the Prehistoric Society and its journal, in the development
of Cambridge’s archaeology department, and of the British Academy Project on the
Early History of Agriculture, as well as striving for a world prehistory.
Fagan sets out all these achievements with great skill, albeit with some
repetition. Overall, this is a worthy account of a once pre-eminent figure whose
influence has been widespread and profound.
