RIP Brian Fagan, master archaeology writer.

Fagan, who was emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, died on July 1.

Word comes via the archaeology/anthropology grapevine that Brian Fagan, the noted archaeology writer who made his academic base at UC Santa Barbara, died on July 1, at age 88. As an archaeology writer myself, mostly during my time as the Paris correspondent for Science, I knew him and his work, which was widely appreciated. A bit over 20 years ago I also profiled him for Science; the pdf below might be a little hard to read but I hope not too difficult, since Substack will not let me make it any bigger. (Here is the link for those who have access to the journal.)

Fagan wrote a LOT of archaeology books during his career (including Time Detectives: How Scientists Use Technology to Recapture the Past; Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations; and The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History) whereas I have only written one. Nevertheless, I had asked him to write a jacket blurb for my book about Neolithic Çatalhöyük in Turkey, which he did after making clear he would only do it if he really liked the book—not an unreasonable condition, I don’t think.

Oh sure, I know you want to know what he said about my book, The Goddess and the Bull:

“Michael Balter takes us on a fascinating journey through the excavations at one of the world's great archaeological sites. He provides an engrossing chronicle of one of the world's earliest farming villages and of the personalities and thoughts of the archaeologists engaged in the research -- the human side of archaeology.”

Not long afterwards, I was visiting Los Angeles and thought he would make a good profile for Science. I checked with my editors to see if it might present any kind of conflict of interest, but they did not seem bothered about it. So I drove up to Santa Barbara and we had a very pleasant lunch at a restaurant with an ocean view, with my tape recorder going. I think the story had a very interesting angle on academic research.

Of course my profile is now more than 20 years old and he did a lot since then. I have not seen any formal obituaries yet, but will add some links when they do appear.

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