Basic Biographical Information
John Desmond Clark was born in London on 10 April 1916 and died on 14 February 2002 in Oakland, California. He was educated at Monkton Combe School and at the University of Cambridge, whence he graduated with First Class Honors in Archaeology and Anthropology in 1937. In 1938 he married Betty Cable Baume, whom he had met when she was studying modern languages at Cambridge. He was Curator and later Director of the Rhodes-Livingstone Museum in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) from 1937 until 1961 and built it into one of the finest museums of African ethnography and archaeology on the continent. During this time he became well acquainted with all the leading figures in African archaeology and was instrumental in encouraging regular professional interactions across Africa through the Pan-African Congresses on Prehistory held every four years in different countries in Africa, the third of which he organized in Livingstone in 1955 (Clark & Cole 1957).
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References
Clark, J.D. 1954. The prehistoric cultures of the Horn of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 1959. The prehistory of southern Africa. London: Penguin.
- 1967. The atlas of African prehistory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- 1969 (1974, 2001). The Kalambo Falls prehistoric site. 3 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 1970. The prehistory of Africa. London: Thames and Hudson.
- (ed.) 1982. Cambridge history of Africa, Volume I: from earliest times to ca. 500 BC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, J.D. & W.W. Bishop. (ed.) 1967. Background to evolution in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Clark, J.D. & S.A. Brandt. (ed.) 1984. From hunters to farmers: the causes and consequences of food production in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Further Reading
Clark, J.D. 1975. Africa in prehistory: peripheral or paramount? Man 10: 175-98.
- 1980. Human populations and cultural adaptations in the Sahara and Nile during prehistoric times, in M.A.J. Williams & H. Faure (ed.) The Sahara and the Nile: Quaternary environments and prehistoric occupation in northern Africa: 527-82. Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema.
- 2002. An archaeologist at work in African history and early human studies: teamwork and insight (University History series). Berkeley: University of California.
Clark, J.D. & S. Cole. (ed.) 1957. Third Pan-African Congress on Prehistory, Livingstone 1955. London: Chatto & Windus.
Clark, J.D. & J.W.K. Harris. 1985. Fire and its roles in early hominid lifeways. African Archaeological Review 3: 3-27.
Clark, J.D., B. Asfaw, G. Assefa, J.W.K. Harris, H. Kurashina, R.C. Walter, T.D. White & M.A.J. Williams. 1984. Palaeoanthropological discoveries in the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia. Nature 307: 423-28.
Cooke, H.B.S., J.W.K. Harris & K. Harris. 1987. J. Desmond Clark: his career and contributions to prehistory. Journal of Human Evolution 16: 549-81.
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Williams, M. (2014). Clark, John Desmond. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_724
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