Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 64

JOHN DESMOND CLARK E. J. Lofgren

Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 65

John Desmond Clark

1916–2002

FOR SIX DECADES, Professor John Desmond Clark played a leading role
in archaeological research in sub-Saharan Africa. In the words of his for-
mer teacher, Grahame Clark, he did ‘more than any other man to pull
together the prehistory of the continent of Africa from the beginnings of
human culture up to . . . recent times’. He was born in London on 10
April 1916, but the family moved to Turville in rural Buckinghamshire
shortly afterwards. In later years Clark (1986) recalled how walks in the
Chilterns with his father initiated his lifelong interest in the history and
archaeology of the countryside, which was further nurtured by his teach-
ers at Monkton Combe. It was at that school that his enthusiasm first
turned towards Africa, with a short-lived interest in Egyptology. In 1934,
Clark went up to Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he read History
before changing in his third year to Archaeology and Anthropology;
his teachers included both Grahame Clark and Miles Burkitt, who
contributed respectively to his concerns with environments and with arte-
fact typology. During vacations in 1936 and 1937 he excavated under
Mortimer Wheeler at Maiden Castle. It was at Cambridge that he met his
future wife, Betty Baume, then reading Modern Languages at Newnham
College. On graduating in 1937 he sought museum employment whilst
undertaking volunteer work at the London Museum before obtaining an
appointment in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).
A small museum had been established in Livingstone in 1930,
mainly to house ethnographic specimens collected by administrative
officers (Brelsford 1937); a few years later the collection was designated a

Proceedings of the British Academy, 120, 65–79. © The British Academy 2003.
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 66

66 David W. Phillipson

memorial to David Livingstone. In 1937, at the instigation of the Gover-

nor, Sir Hubert Young, an anthropological research organisation, the
Rhodes–Livingstone Institute, was established and the David Livingstone
Memorial Museum, by then housed in the building of the United Ser-
vices Club, was placed under its control. Desmond Clark arrived in
Livingstone in January 1938 to serve (at a total salary of £400 p.a.) both
as Secretary to the Rhodes–Livingstone Institute and as Curator of the
Museum, Godfrey Wilson being at that time the Institute’s Director.
Livingstone in 1938 was a small and isolated town (Phillipson 1975).
It had been the capital of Northern Rhodesia until 1935 when the Gov-
ernor and Secretariat moved to the more centrally situated Lusaka. The
six miles which separate Livingstone from the Victoria Falls were (and
are) a major obstacle to tourist development. With the departure of the
central administration, Livingstone became essentially a provincial
administrative centre and a railway town on what was then the main line
of entry from the south. In due course, the Rhodes–Livingstone Institute
also moved its base to Lusaka where, long afterwards, it became the
Institute of African Studies at the University of Zambia. The Museum,
however, was formally separated from the Institute and remained in
Livingstone, re-designated the Rhodes–Livingstone Museum with its own
Board of Trustees. (When Northern Rhodesia became independent in
1964 as the Republic of Zambia, the Museum became known as the
Livingstone Museum, and its Trustees as the National Museums Board.)
On arrival in Livingstone in 1938, Desmond Clark found himself in a
huge territory about the archaeology of which very little was known. He
was not, however, the first Cambridge graduate to take an interest in this
field; Farquhar B. Macrae, an administrative officer in the central and
eastern regions, had pioneered this study more than a decade previously
(Macrae 1926; Macrae and Lancaster 1937). The presence of palaeo-
lithic artefacts in the Zambezi gravels near the Victoria Falls had been
recognised for many years (Lamplugh 1906; Armstrong and Jones 1936),
and early human skeletal remains subsequently attributed to Homo
rhodesiensis, discovered in 1921 during mining operations at Broken Hill,
had been deposited (there being at that time no museum in Northern
Rhodesia) at the Natural History Museum in London (Pycraft et al.
1928). Later Stone Age deposits had also been recognised at Mumbwa in
the Kafue valley (Macrae 1926; Dart and del Grande 1931). Just how little
was known overall is conveniently demonstrated by M. V. Brelsford’s
Handbook of the David Livingstone Memorial Museum (1937) which went
to press a few weeks before Clark’s arrival in Northern Rhodesia: discus-
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 67

JOHN DESMOND CLARK 67

sion of archaeology occupies a total of seven pages (in the section headed
‘Ethnological Collection’). Clark (1939), taking earlier discoveries as his
starting point, summarised his aims in a twenty-seven-page pamphlet
which provides a telling contrast with the Museum Handbook.
At Mumbwa, Clark conducted new excavations through deep strati-
fied deposits which preserved a sequence from the Middle Stone Age
onwards, paralleling the later stages of the Victoria Falls succession. The
results, promptly published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of
South Africa (Clark 1942), were particularly noteworthy on two counts:
this was the first of many publications that was illustrated with Betty
Clark’s exceptionally accomplished drawings of stone artefacts, and
because, almost alone of contemporary archaeological writings, it pro-
vided details of the pottery found in the more recent levels: such artefacts,
now recognised as essential for the study of the archaeology of the past
two millennia, were at that time generally ignored and discarded as ‘kaffir
rubbish’. Clark’s research at Mumbwa was supported by a grant of £15.
Subsequently, further investigations at the site (Savage 1983; Barham
2000) have provided much greater detail of a sequence now seen as
extending over some 200,000–250,000 years.
Livingstone was a convenient base from which to investigate the
Zambezi gravels, and Clark mapped these in considerable detail.
Upstream of the Victoria Falls, gravels had been deposited at various
heights as the Zambezi cut down through the Kalahari Sand to the under-
lying basalt. Downstream, the river flows through a zigzag series of
gorges cut deep into the basalt, leaving gravels on the lips of the gorges as
well as higher on the sides of the valley. Survey, surface collection and
selective excavation enabled Clark to establish an outline typological
sequence of stone artefacts and to link this with the processes whereby
the river had cut both downwards through the sand and backwards along
successive lines of Falls, leaving the gorges below. This research, essen-
tially modelled on that of the Vaal terraces in South Africa (Sohnge et al.
1937), was not published until 1950 (Clark 1950a), although much of the
fieldwork was undertaken between 1938 and 1940. Notwithstanding its
prime importance in demonstrating the outline sequence of south-central
African prehistory, it suffered from several inherent problems: it was car-
ried out at a time when no reliable methods were available for establish-
ing absolute ages, the artefacts were only very rarely recovered from
primary contexts, and only occasionally were non-lithic materials associ-
ated. It was nonetheless clear that a long series of Acheulian-type indus-
tries was succeeded first by a phase characterised by core-axes, picks and
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 68

68 David W. Phillipson

other heavy-duty tools, and then by industries based on flakes struck

from prepared cores; these artefacts became progressively smaller
through successive phases of the Middle Stone Age before being replaced
by backed microliths. It is not easy for younger prehistorians today to
appreciate the fundamental importance of establishing this very basic
framework in a huge area whose prehistory was previously unknown.
Broken Hill proved to be a long-lasting interest. The site of the origi-
nal discovery had long-since been quarried away (Hrdlicka 1926). Clark
was, however, able to reconstruct some of its circumstances and to exam-
ine the material preserved at the Natural History Museum. At the Broken
Hill Mine itself, near the town now known as Kabwe, he located occur-
rences of artefacts which he believed to resemble those associated with
the Homo rhodesiensis skull. The results of this work were published
(Clark et al.) in 1947 and subsequently. In the absence of radiometric dat-
ing, the age of this material was seriously underestimated and an appre-
ciation of its full significance had to await further discoveries towards the
end of the twentieth century.
The Clarks were in Northern Rhodesia for less than three years before
the outbreak of the Second World War. Desmond served with the East
Africa Command, mainly in Somalia and Ethiopia, being subsequently
attached to the British Military Administration. Betty remained in
Livingstone with their son and daughter. This is not the place to record
Desmond’s military exploits; more relevant is the ability that he demon-
strated, while in Somalia and Ethiopia between 1941 and 1946, to study
and record the local Stone Age archaeology. The localities investigated
were determined primarily by military considerations, and Clark did not
on this occasion penetrate the low-lying Rift-Valley regions where abun-
dant remains of early hominids have recently been discovered and where
he himself was to work in later years. Like the earlier Zambezi valley
investigation, that in the Horn was written up and published after the war
(Clark 1954), the two projects having comprised Desmond’s Ph.D. disser-
tation, submitted in five volumes at Cambridge under Burkitt’s supervi-
sion in 1950. The extensive collections which he made were mostly
divided between his own museum in Livingstone, the Coryndon Memor-
ial Museum (now the National Museum of Kenya) in Nairobi, and the
Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Although Clark was once again hindered by the impossibility of obtain-
ing absolute age-determinations, an overall framework was constructed
which, partly because of the scarcity of subsequent more detailed
research, retains much value (cf. Brandt 1986).
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 69

JOHN DESMOND CLARK 69

Returning to Livingstone after the war, Clark turned his energies, with
great effect, to expanding the infrastructure for archaeological investiga-
tions in Northern Rhodesia both administratively and through nurturing
awareness locally as well as internationally. Recognising the limited
prospects for museum expansion, in 1948 he founded a parallel organisa-
tion called, officially, the Commission for the Preservation of Natural and
Historical Monuments and Relics or, more popularly and concisely, the
National Monuments Commission, with himself as secretary. This body
was established under a new ordinance which controlled archaeological
research and provided a measure of protection for sites and artefacts; it
had its own commissioners and government subvention, independent of
the Rhodes–Livingstone Museum, even though its separation in terms
of premises and personnel was less clearly defined. The manoeuvre
achieved two useful purposes: it increased the support-base for Northern
Rhodesian archaeology and provided a useful counter-balance of author-
ity which avoided the conflicts of interest which may arise when a
museum has sole authority to control research and export. (Several
African countries have experienced such conflicts, but this has not pre-
vented Zimbabwe’s amalgamation of two formerly distinct organisations;
in Zambia, however, the re-named National Museums Board and the
National Heritage Conservation Commission have retained their separate
identity.)
Thus reinforced, Clark expanded his researches in previously uninves-
tigated parts of Northern Rhodesia. He initiated excavations at
Nachikufu and other rockshelters in the central and northern regions,
recording the associated rock paintings. He promptly recognised that the
Late Stone Age microlithic industries of these wooded plateaux were dis-
tinct both from those which he had previously studied at Mumbwa and in
the Zambezi valley and from those already known even further to the
south; the schematic paintings, also, presented a marked contrast with the
well known naturalistic art beyond the Zambezi (Clark 1950b; Summers
1959).
It was during one of these reconnaissances, in 1953, that Clark made
a discovery of the greatest importance. In the extreme north of Zambia,
the small Kalambo river forms the border with Tanzania. Flowing west-
ward to the southern extremity of Lake Tanganyika, it enters the Rift over
a spectacular waterfall with an uninterrupted drop of 726 feet. Immedi-
ately above the Kalambo Falls, the river flows through a small lake basin
and, in its banks, Clark found numerous well-preserved artefacts of
Acheulian type, apparently in association with wood. Excavations were
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 70

70 David W. Phillipson

conducted at intervals until 1966, often on a large scale, revealing a

stratified sequence from the Early Stone Age into recent times. Interpre-
tation and publication of the resultant data proved to be a daunting task
but was eventually completed (Clark 1969, 1974, 2001); an evaluation will
be attempted below.
Clark’s early years in Livingstone were ones of intellectual isolation.
He has himself recorded (1990: 193) that, in 1938, ‘there were only two or
three professional archaeologists in the whole of the continent south of
the Sahara, who . . . met only on rare occasions’. Fortunately, his contract
of employment provided for overseas leave every three years; on these
occasions the Clarks would rent a house near Cambridge in order to have
the opportunity of writing while in contact with friends and colleagues.
The meetings of the PanAfrican Prehistory Congress, initiated by
Louis Leakey in Nairobi in 1948 and held in Africa generally every four
years thereafter, were particularly important in fostering contact and
knowledge of research in other regions. As more posts were established
within Africa, and archaeologists based elsewhere began to take an
increasing interest in African matters, the meetings of the PanAfrican
Congress have still retained their importance, becoming particularly valu-
able to the growing numbers of local scholars based in African countries
with only limited opportunities for inter-regional travel. Clark attended
all of the eleven meetings that were held during his lifetime.
In 1955 Desmond and Betty Clark organised the Third PanAfrican
Congress in Livingstone (Clark and Cole 1957). Delegates came from all
over the continent: a major achievement in those days of racial segrega-
tion was the organisation of accommodation for their African colleagues.
In the absence of the Abbé Breuil, Louis Leakey presided; one of his
duties was formally to open the Field Museum beside the Eastern
Cataract of the Victoria Falls, which Clark had built over one of his exca-
vations through the Zambezi gravel deposits. The Congress excursions
took delegates to many parts of the territory up to a thousand miles from
Livingstone, and into the then Belgian Congo, to see sites and excavations
(Clark 1955; Mortelmans 1955).
At the same time, Clark was expanding archaeological capabilities
and infrastructure in Northern Rhodesia. He greatly developed the
Museum’s buildings, collections, displays, and publications (Anon. 1951).
He successively appointed to the Museum staff two young British archae-
ologists, Ray Inskeep and Brian Fagan, who pioneered the archaeological
study of the last two thousand years, when the region saw the establish-
ment of populations ancestral to modern African peoples. Additional
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 71

JOHN DESMOND CLARK 71

colleagues were appointed to the Monuments Commission, where John

and Lilian Hodges were followed by J. H. Chaplin.
It was at this stage in his career that Clark had to face the problem
that, as the employee of a Northern Rhodesian organisation, he was
expected to do most of his work in that territory. But African colonial
borders—like those of the succeeding independent states—were arbi-
trary, bearing virtually no relevance to modern populations and none
whatsoever to those of the remote past. In 1959 Clark was invited by a
Portuguese diamond company to investigate the archaeology of northern
Angola where open-cast mining in the valleys of the southern Congo trib-
utaries had produced large exposures of artefact-bearing deposits. This
was important and stimulating research, subsequently published (Clark
1963), but it did not fit well with a British colonial base.
This broadening of horizons now led Clark to attempt a work of syn-
thesis, The Prehistory of Southern Africa (Clark 1959), one of a highly
influential trilogy published by Penguin Books between 1954 and 1960.
This book made Clark and his work much more widely known: he was
appointed CBE in 1960 and elected to Fellowship of the British Academy
in the following year. Shortly afterwards he accepted a Chair in Old
World Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, a base he
retained for the rest of his life.
Following his move to Berkeley, Clark proved a popular and inspiring
teacher, and his research operations became truly pan-African, as was
reflected in his work on the Atlas of African Prehistory (Clark 1967). In
Malawi between 1965 and 1968 he undertook and co-ordinated palaeon-
tological, archaeological and geological research on the Pleistocene lake
beds of the Karonga region, while also facilitating investigations on sites
of later periods by several of his students and by Keith Robinson who
was then unable to continue his researches south of the Zambezi (Clark
and Haynes 1970a, 1970b; Robinson and Sandelowski 1968). Subse-
quently, in 1970–3, Clark turned his attentions northwards to investigate
the development of settled life, cultivation, and herding in the Sahara and
the Sudanese Nile valley (Adamson et al. 1974). Particularly important
were his excavations beside the Nile (Clark 1984, 1989) and at Adrar Bous
in Niger (Clark et al. 1973). In 1974 he returned to Ethiopia after an
absence of almost three decades. With students and colleagues, and con-
centrating in the southeastern regions, he investigated Middle and Late
Stone Age sites and rock art, also seeking evidence relating to early farm-
ing practices (Clark and Williams 1978). Subsequently, he became increas-
ingly involved with research on earlier periods of prehistory, turning his
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 72

72 David W. Phillipson

attention for the first time to regions beyond Africa: he undertook

fieldwork in Syria (Clark 1967–8), India, and China.
At Berkeley, Clark found congenial colleagues, notably Sherwood L.
Washburn and F. C. Clark Howell, with whom he developed close friend-
ships and long-term collaboration. When Glynn Isaac (whose early death
in 1985 was a sad loss both to Clark and to prehistoric studies worldwide)
also joined the Berkeley Anthropology Department, there developed a
school of African archaeology of unparalleled distinction. Its graduate
students have gone on to hold important positions at many North
American universities and in numerous African countries, notably
Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and Nigeria. The Department’s decision, after
Isaac’s departure and death and his own retirement, not to continue this
emphasis caused Clark sadness and disillusionment.
Glyn Daniel (1986: 422) saw fit to record that, in 1972, the Electors
offered the Disney Chair of Archaeology at Cambridge to Desmond
Clark in succession to his former teacher, Grahame Clark, but that the
offer was declined, Daniel himself being subsequently elected. Desmond
remained at Berkeley, taking formal but nominal retirement in 1986.
After retirement, Clark’s attentions turned increasingly to Ethiopia
where he undertook important work at the very early hominid sites of
the Middle Awash region. This research, begun in 1982 following dis-
covery by Taieb (1971) and earlier investigations co-ordinated by Kalb,
was conducted in annual field seasons from 1990 onwards as a collabo-
rative effort involving a large number of specialists. Clark was a major
co-ordinator throughout, however, advancing age and failing eyesight
gradually reduced his field participation. Although the importance of
this work is clear, it has not been well served by the publications that
have so far appeared. There have been a number of brief specialist pre-
liminary papers (e.g. Asfaw et al. 1997; Clark 1987; Clark et al. 1994;
Wolde Gabriel et al. 1994), but the one overview volume (de Heinzelin,
Clark et al. 2000) is, frankly, disappointing in that it provides little com-
prehensive detail, particularly of the palaeontology, on a scale that
would be commensurate with the effort and resources expended. It was
unfortunate, too, that this research became enmeshed in professional
rivalries and controversies with predecessors and contemporaries (cf.
Kalb 2001) which caused much difficulty for the Ethiopian authorities
(for an Ethiopian view of such matters, see Zelalem Assefa 1994).
In one of his autobiographical publications Clark (1990: 197) recalled
his amazement that, in the 1940s, the Abbé Breuil claimed the ability to
undertake typological classification of Acheulian artefacts by feel. Half a
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 73

JOHN DESMOND CLARK 73

century later, with rapidly deteriorating eyesight, he developed the same

ability himself in the Middle Awash (Dr Yonas Beyene pers. comm.).
Although Clark was primarily interested, particularly in his latter
years, in the archaeology of early, so-called Stone Age, periods, he did
not ignore more recent materials. Much of his work, notably in
Zambia, Sudan, and Niger, was focused on evidence for early settled
communities whose lifestyle was often, but not invariably, based on
cultivation and/or herding. He took a strong interest in African tradi-
tional culture and technology, using his observations to aid his interpre-
tation of archaeological materials. Little more than a decade after his
synthesis of the archaeology of southern Africa, he produced a compar-
able work covering the entire continent (Clark 1970). It is instructive to
compare them: the second work is based far more securely on recent field-
work, much of it multidisciplinary. It frequently takes a worldwide view
and, as befits a shorter and more general work, is less concerned with
local variations on the overall theme. Both books strongly emphasise the
earlier periods, before farming and permanent settlement, in marked
contrast with more recent syntheses (Mitchell 2002 and Phillipson 1993
respectively).
Clark himself (1990: 189–90) recognised three phases in the study of
African archaeology: a pioneer period before 1930, a formative period
1930–60, marked by ‘the introduction of a more scientific approach to
recovering, dating and interpreting the context and distribution of cul-
tural remains’, and a modern behavioural and actualistic period begin-
ning c.1960. An outline of Clark’s own career permits a somewhat
different view. I suggest that Desmond Clark’s research prior to 1946
belongs essentially to a pioneer period where sites were considered in
isolation and often recorded or investigated simply because they had
been discovered, often by chance. After the Second World War a
markedly different strategy may be discerned, based on seeking sites and
planning their investigation in order to answer specific questions or to
fill gaps in the known distributions. For the first decade or so this
process was greatly hindered by the effective absence of means to estab-
lish absolute chronologies and, as a consequence, inter-regional correla-
tions. During the 1950s radiocarbon dating became available, to be
followed by potassium-argon and other methods which respectively pro-
vided the first reliable age estimates for the last forty thousand years and
for the period before one million years ago. The first results thus
obtained generally indicated a far longer timespan than had previously
been considered likely; several archaeologists, including Clark, initially
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 74

74 David W. Phillipson

regarded them with scepticism. It was, for example, some two decades
after the first radiocarbon dates for the Zambian Later Stone Age were
obtained that Clark fully accepted that this stage had begun significantly
more than 20,000 years ago, as opposed to the 6,000 years previously
estimated. Another source of misunderstanding was the lack of realisa-
tion that radiocarbon measurements before about 40,000 years ago must
be regarded as minimum rather than absolute ages. Dates of c.60,000
years for the Kalambo Falls Acheulian were thus accepted in the 1960s
as finite, whereas evidence more recently obtained has indicated a true
antiquity four or five times as great. The third phase, for Clark, was
marked by his move to Berkeley where his involvement with colleagues
and students permitted his full participation in the international trend
towards collaborative and multi-disciplinary research. In Africa, this
period coincided with many countries’ attainment of independence and
the concomitant rising interest in local prehistory, and Clark was able to
play his part in providing post-graduate training for young archaeolo-
gists from Africa. Despite his base in Berkeley, the controversies sur-
rounding the rise and fall of the so-called New Archaeology effectively
passed Clark by. He nonetheless deplored (1986: 188) what he saw as an
increasing tendency to reconstruct prehistory on the basis of theory
which was not based on firm primary evidence.
In later years, Clark sometimes found it hard to come to terms with
changing economic fortunes and political priorities in post-colonial
Africa. However, on his last visit to Zambia in 1995 he was gratified to be
received with great warmth and affection by the Zambian staff of the
institutions—National Museum and Monuments Commission—for
whose foundation and development he had been largely responsible.
Clark’s move to Berkeley had some effect on the flow of his publica-
tions. When he worked alone, he generally managed to publish his
research reasonably promptly. When in the 1950s colleagues became
available who were, in effect, research assistants, such as John and Lilian
Hodges, publication fell behind. In Berkeley, early graduate students
were able to work on much of this material and to publish it under
Clark’s supervision (e.g. Miller 1972). Clark’s own fieldwork after 1960,
however, presented greater difficulty: at Kalambo Falls, Adrar Bous and,
to some extent, the Middle Awash, arrears of publication began to accu-
mulate. Such was Clark’s acknowledged eminence that he was inundated
with invitations and requests for syntheses. The resultant papers and lec-
tures were important and often highly influential, and Clark did not find
it easy to decline such requests, although they took up a disproportion-
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 75

JOHN DESMOND CLARK 75

ate amount of his time, at the expense of writing up his primary

research. However, with help from numerous colleagues, virtually all
Clark’s outstanding research had been published at the time of his
death. He was particularly pleased when the third and last volume of the
Kalambo Falls report was published in 2001 by Cambridge University
Press. This volume provides a convenient measure of Clark’s achieve-
ment and of the changes in research strategy which took place during
his career.
Clark discovered the Kalambo Falls site, as noted above, in 1953. Hav-
ing confirmed the important presence of little-disturbed Acheulian
deposits with associated wood, he organised the first season of large-scale
excavation in 1956. It was an impressive undertaking, unparalleled in
Africa at that time, separated by a thousand miles of largely unpaved
road from his base in Livingstone. Fortunately, it took place at a time of
economic optimism, in the early years of the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland, and resources from Northern Rhodesia were supplemented
by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Clark’s collaborators in
these early seasons were drawn mostly from southern and eastern Africa.
Further research on the site took place over the period of his transfer to
Berkeley, the team becoming increasingly international: large-scale exca-
vations were conducted in 1959 and 1963, with more selective operations
in 1964 and 1966. A complex and detailed stratigraphic sequence was
established which Clark (1964) was able to link both with local environ-
mental changes and with continent-wide developments. When, finally,
this material was comprehensively published in 2001, the descriptions of
the stone industries placed less emphasis on detailed metrical statistics
than would have been expected in the 1960s, but more on the processes by
which they had been made: typology as a prime concern had been
replaced by technology and conceptualisation. The verbal descriptions
are once again greatly enhanced by Betty Clark’s magnificent drawings.
There is, however, disappointingly little consideration of the uses to which
these artefacts may have been put by their makers. Kalambo Falls, despite
the total absence of hominid and faunal remains, is a key site, providing
the best sequence yet known for the processes which marked the final
demise of the Acheulian. When this sequence was first demonstrated, cur-
rent interpretations of the radiocarbon dating evidence suggested that
these processes had taken place over a remarkably short period of time.
Now that it has been demonstrated that some 200,000 years were
involved, appreciation of these changes is greatly facilitated. Volume III
of the Kalambo Falls report contains description of the Early and
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 76

76 David W. Phillipson

Middle Stone Age artefact assemblages by Clark, with help from others,
specialist contributions by a number of former students and other
colleagues, and a major but concise evaluation of the sequence in its Old
World palaeolithic context, by Derek Roe.
Desmond Clark displayed great learning, prodigious energy and
productivity, wide friendships and warm hospitality. He was elected a
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1952 and a Fellow of the British
Academy in 1961. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and of the National Academy of Science (USA). His
Cambridge Sc.D. was awarded in 1975 and he held honorary doctorates
at Witwatersrand and Cape Town Universities (1985), along with the
Gold Medals of the Society of Antiquaries of London (1985) and the
Archaeological Institute of America (1989). The British Academy
awarded him the Grahame Clark Medal for Prehistory in 1997. He
became a citizen of the United States of America in 1993. He died in
Oakland, California, on 14 February 2002.
Desmond and Betty Clark worked together for more than sixty
years; she survived him by two months. She and the late Frederick Sisii
Wamulwange were probably the only people who could invariably read
his handwriting. Desmond acknowledged his professional debt to Betty,
describing her as his life-long collaborator: ‘What I have been able to do
in archaeology has been essentially a team effort by the two of us and,
had it not been for her input, it would not have been possible to do half
of what we have managed to do between us’ (Clark 1986: 181).

DAVID W. PHILLIPSON
Fellow of the Academy

Note. I am grateful for the help and advice of Mr John Clark (son of the late
Professor Clark), Mr Ray Inskeep (former colleague at the Rhodes–Livingstone
Museum), Dr Laurel Phillipson (former graduate student at Berkeley) and Dr Yonas
Beyene (collaborator in Ethiopia). For the photograph here reproduced I am indebted
to Professor Edward J. Lofgren.

References

Adamson, D., Clark, J. D. and Williams, M. A. J. (1974), ‘Barbed bone points from
central Sudan and the age of the ‘Early Khartoum’ tradition’, Nature, 249: 120–3.
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 77

JOHN DESMOND CLARK 77

Anon. (1951), ‘The Rhodes–Livingstone Museum’, South African Museums

Association Bulletin, 5: 46–7.
Armstrong, A. L. and Jones, N. (1936), ‘The antiquity of Man in Rhodesia as demon-
strated by stone implements of the ancient Zambezi gravels south of Victoria
Falls’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 66: 331–48.
Asfaw, B. et al. (1997), ‘Fossil hominids, fauna and artifacts from Bouri, Middle
Awash, Ethiopia’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Supplement), 24:
69.
Barham, L. (2000), The Middle Stone Age of Zambia, South Central Africa (Bristol).
Brandt, S. A. (1986), ‘The Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of the
Horn of Africa’, African Archaeological Review, 4: 41–82.
Brelsford, W. V. (1937), Handbook of the David Livingstone Memorial Museum
(Livingstone).
Clark, J. D. (1939), Stone Age Sites in Northern Rhodesia and the Possibilities of Future
Research (Livingstone).
—— (1942), ‘Further excavations (1939) at the Mumbwa Caves, Northern Rhodesia’,
Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 29: 133–201.
—— (1950a), The Stone Age Cultures of Northern Rhodesia (Cape Town).
—— (1950b), ‘The newly discovered Nachikufu Culture of Northern Rhodesia and
the possible origin of certain elements of the South African Smithfield Culture’,
South African Archaeological Bulletin, 5: 86–98.
—— (1954), The Prehistoric Cultures of the Horn of Africa (Cambridge).
—— (1955), Excursion Handbook to Northern Rhodesia (Third PanAfrican Congress
on Prehistory) (Lusaka).
—— (1959), The Prehistory of Southern Africa (Harmondsworth).
—— (1963), Prehistoric Cultures of Northeast Angola and their Significance in Tropical
Africa (Lisbon).
—— (1964), ‘The influence of environment in inducing culture change at the
Kalambo Falls prehistoric site’, South African Archaeological Bulletin, 19: 93–101.
—— (1967), Atlas of African Prehistory (Chicago).
—— (1967–8), ‘The Middle Acheulian occupation site at Latamne, northern Syria’,
Quaternaria, 9: 1–68 and 10: 1–71.
—— (1969), Kalambo Falls Prehistoric Site, I: geology, palaeoecology and detailed
stratigraphy of the excavations (Cambridge).
—— (1970), The Prehistory of Africa (London).
—— (1974), Kalambo Falls Prehistoric Site, II: the late prehistoric remains
(Cambridge).
—— (1984), ‘Prehistoric cultural continuity and economic change in the central
Sudan in the early Holocene’, in J. D. Clark and S. Brandt (eds.), From Hunters to
Farmers (Berkeley), pp. 113–26.
—— (1986), ‘Archaeological retrospect 10’, Antiquity, 60: 179–88.
—— (1987), ‘Transitions: Homo erectus and the Acheulian—the Ethiopian sites of
Gadeb and the Middle Awash’, Journal of Human Evolution, 16: 809–26.
—— (1989), ‘Shabona: an Early Khartoum settlement on the White Nile’, in L.
Krzyzaniak and M. Kobusiewicz (eds.), Late Prehistory of the Nile Basin and the
Sahara (Poznan), pp. 387–410.
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 78

78 David W. Phillipson

Clark, J. D. (1990), ‘A personal memoir’, in P. Robertshaw (ed.), A History of African

Archaeology (London), pp. 189–204.
—— (2001), Kalambo Falls Prehistoric Site, III: the earlier cultures (Middle and
Earlier Stone Age) (Cambridge).
—— and Cole, S. (eds.) (1957), Third PanAfrican Congress on Prehistory (London).
—— and Haynes, C. V. (1970a), ‘An elephant butchery site at Mwanganda’s Village,
Karonga, Malawi’, World Archaeology, 1: 390–411.
—— —— (1970b), ‘Interim Report on Palaeoanthropological investigations in the
Lake Malawi Rift’, Quaternaria, 13: 305–53.
—— and Williams, M. A. J. (1978), ‘Recent archaeological research in southeastern
Ethiopia, 1974–5’, Annales d’Ethiopie, 11: 19–42.
—— et al. (1947), ‘New Studies on Rhodesian Man’, Journal of the Royal Anthropo-
logical Institute, 77: 7–32.
—— et al. (1973), ‘The geomorphology and archaeology of Adrar Bous, Central
Sahara: a preliminary report’, Quaternaria, 17: 245–98.
—— et al. (1994), ‘African Homo erectus: old radiometric ages and young Oldowan
assemblages in the middle Awash valley, Ethiopia’, Science, 264: 1907–10.
Daniel, G. (1986), Some Small Harvest (London).
Dart, R. A. and del Grande, N. (1931), ‘The ancient iron-smelting cavern at
Mumbwa’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 19: 379–427.
de Heinzelin, J., Clark, J. D. et al. (eds.) (2000), The Acheulian and the Plio-Pleistocene
Deposits of the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia (Annales, Sciences géologiques, vol.
104) (Tervuren).
Hrdlicka, A. (1926), ‘The Rhodesian Man’, American Journal of Physical Anthropol-
ogy, 9: 173–93.
Kalb, J. (2001), Adventures in the Bone Trade (New York).
Lamplugh, G. W. (1906), ‘Notes on the occurrence of stone implements in the valley
of the Zambezi around Victoria Falls’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 36:
159–69.
Macrae, F. B. (1926), ‘The Stone Age in Northern Rhodesia’ (Southern Rhodesia)
Native Affairs Department Annual, 4: 67–8.
—— and Lancaster, D. G. (1937), ‘Stone Age sites in Northern Rhodesia’, Man, 37:
article 74.
Miller, S. F. (1972), ‘The archaeological sequence of the Zambian later Stone
Age’, in H. J. Hugot (ed.), Actes du 6e Congrès Panafricain de Préhistoire, pp.
565–72.
Mitchell, P. (2002), The Prehistory of Southern Africa (Cambridge).
Mortelmans, G. (1955), Excursion Handbook, Belgian Congo (Third PanAfrican
Congress on Prehistory) (Lusaka).
Phillipson, D. W. (1975), ‘The early history of the town of Livingstone’, in D. W.
Phillipson (ed.), Mosi-oa-Tunya: a handbook to the Victoria Falls region (London),
pp. 88–104.
—— (1993), African Archaeology (second revised edition) (Cambridge).
Pycraft, W. P. et al. (1928), Rhodesian Man and Associated Remains (London).
Robinson, K. R. and Sandelowski, B. (1968), ‘The Iron Age in northern Malawi:
recent work’, Azania, 3: 107–46.
Clark 1132 23/10/03 4:39 pm Page 79

JOHN DESMOND CLARK 79

Savage, D. K. (1983), Identifying Industries in South Central Africa: the Zambian

Wilton example. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley: University of
California.
Sohnge, P. G. et al. (1937), The Geology and Archaeology of the Vaal River Basin
(Pretoria) (Union of South Africa Geological Memoir 35).
Summers, R. (ed.) (1959), Prehistoric Rock Art of the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia).
Taieb, M. (1971), Les dépots quaternaires sédimentaires de la vallée de l’Aouache,
Ethiopie, Quaternaria, 15: 351–65.
Wolde Gabriel, G. et al. (1994), ‘Ecological and temporal placement of early Pliocene
hominids at Aramis, Ethiopia’, Nature, 371: 330–3.
Zelalem Assefa (1994), ‘History of Palaeoanthropological research in the southern
Omo, Ethiopia’, in Bahru Zewde et al. (eds.) Proceedings of the Eleventh
International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa), vol. 1, pp. 71–85.