John Wymer

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Dr John James Wymer, (5 March 1928 - 10 February 2006) was a British archaeologist and one of the leading experts on the Palaeolithic period.

Born near Kew Gardens in London, Wymer was introduced to archaeology by his parents who would take him to gravel pits to search for ancient sites. He trained as a teacher but spent his spare time pursuing his passion for archaeology and never took a formal qualification in the discipline.

He made his name in the field in July 1955 when at the age of 27 and still working as an amateur, he found the third piece of the oldest human skull in the British Isles while investigating the quarries at Swanscombe in Kent. This 400,000 year old piece fitted with two previously found fragments and is part of the skull of Swanscombe Man, who is now considered to be a specimen of homo heidelbergensis.

In 1956 he took a job at Reading Museum which permitted him to devote more time to his enthusiastic lifelong interest in the study of handaxes and their makers. He married and had five children with his first wife, Paula whilst at the museum and also helped redesign the galleries, wrote a description of the Moulsford gold torc and undertook an excavation at the classic Mesolithic site at Thatcham. In 1968 he published his first major work, Lower Palaeolithic Archaeology in Britain as represented by the Upper Thames Valley.

He continued to dig both in England and in South Africa in the 1970s including important excavations at Klasies River mouth, Hoxne and Clacton. His work in Africa with Ronald Singer of the University of Chicago revealed a remarkable stratigraphic sequence, more than 25m thick, which spanned the entire Middle and Late Stone Age and which was instrumental in the acceptance of the theory that modern humans came from Africa.

On his return to England, he lectured at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, writing The Palaeolithic Age (1982) and Palaeolithic Sites in East Anglia (1985). Later he worked for the Norfolk Archaeological Unit excavating sites from all periods. He also married his second wife, Mollie, after the dissolution of his first marriage in 1972.

In the 1990s, he was commissioned by English Heritage to map and assess the known Palaeolithic sites across Britain. The published two volume The Lower Palaeolithic Occupation of Britain (1999) has become the key reference work for the period. Clive Gamble described it as archaeology's equivalent of Pevsener's The Buildings of England in providing the foundation stone for future study in the field.

Just before his death, he was closely involved in discoveries at Pakefield that put human occupation south of The Alps back by 200,000 years to c. 700,000 BP.

He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1963 and was also a Fellow of the British Academy as well as Secretary of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History from 1977-84, a Vice-President from 1985 and its President from 2001. In 2002 the British Academy awarded him its Clark Medal for Prehistoric Archaeology. His honorary doctorate was awarded by the University of Reading in recognition of his decades of scholarship.

He is remembered by the archaeological community for his approachability, concision and enthusiasm as well as his exquisite technical drawings. Outside the field, he enjoyed real ale and playing the piano, with an especial fondness for the boogie-woogie style of Jimmy Yancey.