Ucko, Peter (Indigenous Archaeology)

Basic Biographical Information

Peter Ucko (1938–2007) was one of the most influential archaeologists of the second half of the twentieth century. He rejected the claim that archaeology was an “objective science” and emphasized its subjective, frequently political; nature, stressing the central role of those affected by the past and in particular indigenous peoples.

A childhood fascination with Egyptology led Peter Ucko to undergraduate study in anthropology (the only way he could study Egyptology) in London followed by a Ph.D. on prehistoric figurines at the Institute of Archaeology. In 1962 he returned to the UCL anthropology department to teach material culture and later a course on “Primitive Art” that was the basis of the seminal Paleolithic Cave Art (Ucko & Rosenfeld 1967). Ucko’s move from Egyptology, to anthropology, to the Institute, and back to anthropology foreshadowed his lifelong multidisciplinary approach to the study of the past, as one inextricably mixed-up with an...