Clark and Prehistory at Cambridge

If honours and titles give measure of a man, then Professor SirGrahame Clark was indeed important. Faculty Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty ofArchaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University from 1935-46, University Lecturer1946-52, Disney Professor of Archaeology 1952-74, Head of the Department of Archaeol­ogyand Anthropology 1956-61 and 1968-71, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge 1950-73, Master ofPeterhouse 1973-80, he was a visiting lecturer at diverse universities; appointed CBE in1971, he received many awards includ­ing the prestigious Erasmus Prize for 1990,presented by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, for his "long and inspiring devotion toprehistory" (Scarre 1991:10); and in June 1992, he was knighted. Yet wellbefore fame and position were rewards, Clark made major contributions to theestablishment of prehis­tory as an academic subject at Cambridge University. Cambridgewas the first and, for many years, only British university granting an undergraduatedegree which offered prehistory as a specialization. "The development of postgraduateresearch in prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge had to wait on the provision ofundergraduate teaching;' Clark (1989b: 6) recently observed. The "faculty was the onlyone in Britain producing a flow of graduates in prehistoric archaeology" (Clark 1989a:53)