Glyn Daniel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Glyn Edmund Daniel (23 April 1914–13 December 1986) was a Welsh archaeologist who specialised in the European Neolithic and made some of the earliest efforts to popularise the subject on radio and television.
He was born in Barry in South Wales and studied geology at University College, Cardiff before transferring to St John's College, Cambridge to read archaeology and anthropology.
During the Second World War he applied his talents at interpreting archaeological sites through aerial photography by working for the RAF's air photo unit and examining photos of enemy territory.
After the war he returned to Cambridge as an academic, becoming Disney Professor of Archaeology in 1974 and editor of Antiquity between 1958 and 1985. His main subject of study was Neolithic chamber tombs though he also wrote books on the history of archaeology and archaeological thought.
He appeared on television, most memorably with Sir Mortimer Wheeler in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and edited numerous popular studies of archaeological sites and cultures.
Outside of archaeology, he wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym Dilwyn Rees. His novels The Cambridge Murders (1945) (later (1965) published by Penguin under his own name) and Welcome Death (originally published under his own name in 1954) feature Sir Richard Cherrington, an eminent but slightly eccentric archaeologist who is the Vice-President of Fisher College — a character rather obviously based on the author himself.
His academic publications include The Prehistoric Chamber Tombs of France (1960), The Megalith Builders of Western Europe (1963), 150 Years of Archaeology (1976), and a number of articles in archaeological journals.
