Name Joan Oates | Role Archaeologist | |
Education University of Cambridge (1953) Books Babylon, The Rise of Civilization, The Excavations at Tell Al Rimah, 1964 Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada | ||
Joan Louise Oates, FBA (née Lines; born 6 May 1928) is an American archaeologist and academic, specialising in the Ancient Near East. From 1971 to 1995, she was a fellow and tutor of Girton College, Cambridge and a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Since 1995, she has been a Senior Research Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Since 2004, she has been director of the excavations of Tell Brak; she was Co-Director, with her husband David Oates, between 1988 and 2004.
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Personal life
Oates was born on 6 May 1928 to Harold Burdette Lines and Beatrice Naomi Lines. While participating in the excavation of Nimrud, she met David Oates (1927–2004). They married in 1956 and together had three children. They collaborated on a number of archaeological publications and excavations.
Honours
In 2004, Oates was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. In 2014, she was awarded the Grahame Clark Medal for Prehistoric Archaeology by the British Academy. The citation read: "to recognise her reputation as one of the leading authorities on Mesopotamian prehistory as well as her fundamental contributions to our understanding of ancient Near Eastern Civilisation."