(I-Newswire) April 27, 2005 - Professor Graeme Barker FBA, who moved to Cambridge last year as Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, was named the winner of the 2005 Dan David Prize for Past Time Dimension.
This year, the prize is dedicated to the field of Archaeology and Professor Barker shares the prize with Professor Israel Finkelstein from Tel Aviv University. The award ceremony takes place in Tel Aviv on 23 May.
Professor Barker said:
"The prize is a kind of 'lifetime achievement' recognition for the research I have been doing, and am still doing. My time at Leicester was a really important part of my research career, and this award encompasses that period."
In its publicity for the award, The Dan David Prize Website states: Professor of Archaeology and Director, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge, Professor Graeme Barker, FBA, has been an enormously important figure in both European and world archaeology since the 1970s. In striking contrast with most scholars in his discipline he has researched in all major periods of the past from early prehistory to the historic period, and in an extraordinarily wide range of regions - Europe, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, and (currently) Southeast Asia.
He is a leading authority on the story of the beginnings of farming and pastoralism worldwide, long-term land use and its environmental impacts, desertification and archaeological perspectives on landscape degradation and sustainability. Graeme Barker's research focuses on the relationship between landscape and people, the tension between nature and culture which is, and always has been, unique to our species.
This focus has driven his interests in different ecologies and in past societies of different levels of complexity, using the archaeological record to investigate historical and ecological processes operating at short-, medium-, and long-term timescales and the complexity of their inter-relationships. Whether writing on prehistoric to modern cycles of agriculture in the Mediterranean, Roman-period floodwater farming in the Sahara, the pastoral basis of zimbabwe élite power in East Africa, prehistoric to Islamic mining landscapes in southern Jordan, or the antiquity of human impacts on Bornean rainforest, he has demonstrated repeatedly that there are no simple answers to questions of the environmental efficacy or otherwise of past land use systems, despite the propensity of present-day generations (politicians and press especially) to look for simple answers about the past to suit modern agendas.
Graeme Barker's role in archaeology is evident from his extensive publications, many of them landmarks in landscape and environmental archaeology. In addition to this long-standing interest in Italy and Italian archaeology (e.g. A Mediterranean Valley: Landscape Archaeology as Annales History in the Biferno Valley, 1995; Italian translation 2001) in the 1980s Professor Barker moved across the Mediterranean, to Libya, to co-direct a large UNESCO project on semi-arid landscapes. This resulted in a two-volume work on Farming the Desert: the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey (1996, awarded the James R. Wiseman Book award of the Archaeological Institute of America). This research was done together with David Mattingly of the University of Leicester. In the 1990s Barker and Mattingly moved to Jordan to a new inter-disciplinary field project, and are currently in the process of publishing its results as Archaeology and Desertification: the Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey.
All of this work has involved the development of new techniques in field survey as well as the use of all the latest technology now available for such work, including satellite imagery and GIS survey data. Barker is currently working in Borneo, as part of a large research project reinvestigating the famous Niah Cave in Sarawak (Malaysia), a project that involves the study of human rainforest history in island Southeast Asia.
By studying the long-term landscape archaeology of people and environment in such detail Prof. Barker's projects have provided information of great value to peoples living in Mediterranean, semi-arid and tropical rainforest environments.
Along with all of this research Prof. Barker has also taken a major interest in institutional development and the promotion of archaeology in the United Kingdom and abroad. He is well known for promoting the work of younger scholars and in nurturing the future careers of students. He has served as Director of the British School of Archaeology at Rome and as a member of the British Academy's Board for British Schools and Institutes Abroad (of which he currently serves as Chair). He is a member of the editorial boards of several learned journals, serves as a Senior Editor for the Cambridge University Press and is currently President of the Prehistoric Society.
Commenting on the importance of Archaeology, the Dan David Prize website states:
Archaeology records and provides information about the human past. It has revealed fossil remains of human ancestors, of hominids, of Stone Age humans who learned to make simple stone tools, and of Homo sapiens, who appeared in Africa between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago.
Archaeological research spans phenomena that are unique to humans – from human ancestors who were scavengers, through the development of agriculture and early domestication of animals about 10,000 years ago, to ancient civilizations centering on magnificent cities with large buildings and tombs, having roads and human-made waterways and the political and economic power to create and maintain these societies until their decline. It examines cultural phenomena such as monotheism, burial rituals or afterlife beliefs. Recording the development of such phenomena over thousands of years has added to our understanding of the development of the human intellect and spirit.
The study of archaeology has gone through various periods. Until the 1950s, it was concerned mainly with artefacts and cultural sequences. Increased use of radiocarbon dating and computers in the 1960s placed a major emphasis on environmental aspects and enabled a reconstruction of ancient ways of life and how past cultures developed, evolved and interacted with their surroundings. Present-day archaeology provides reliable information on familial, ethnic, gender, age group and social class interactions; on daily life; on beliefs and on value systems of past generations. Contemporary archaeology is focused on the conservation and management of the archaeological record. Cultural resource management efforts are invested to preserve, repair and repatriate artefacts and remains.
The Dan David prize recognizes the immense contribution of Archaeology in linking the present with the past, its practical and educational significance for modern societies and its important role in our appreciation of our common ancestry and the scope of human diversity. Therefore, the 2005 Dan David Prize in the Past Time Dimension will be granted to an individual or institution that, through archaeological research, has made a major and significant contribution to our understanding of the past and its impact on our present and future world. The prize is named after international businessman and philanthropist Dan David. Three annual prizes of US1m each are awarded for achievements having outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world.
More information is available at: www.dandavidprize.com
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