Sad News: Peter Ucko

It is with considerable regret that I have to repeat yesterday's announcement by the present Director of the Instutute of Archaeology at UCL that Professor Peter Ucko B.A. Hons., Ph.D., passed away during Thursday night.

He was born in 1938, and was Director of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL from 1996 until 2005. He was recently editor of the Encounters with Ancient Egypt series. His 1968 monograph Anthropomorphic Figurines of Predynastic Egypt and Neolithic Crete was considerably influential, adopting a rigorously pragmatic approach to the interpretation of figurines in archaeology, encouraging an approach that challenged conventional assumptions.

Professor Ucko's interests were eclectic, ranging from Egyptian archaeology to Australian Aboriginal studies. He was one of the pioneer organizers of the World Archaeological Congress in 1986, and one of the key drivers behind the conference Egyptian Human Remains: Retrieval, conservation and analysis held at Quantara, Egypt, from 25-27th April 2000 (reviewed by J. Mower and J.G. Tassie in the Papers of the Institute of Archeaology 2000).

A one day conference held in his honour, and inspired by him, was held at UCL, entitled A Future for Archaeology: The Past In The Present .

A profile of Peter Ucko can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ucko
A list of his most recent publications can be found at:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/profiles/ucko.htm

Professor Ucko had many research projects ongoing. He will be much missed.