Marek Zvelebil, FSA (1952–2011) was a Czech-Dutch archaeologist and prehistorian, considered amongst "the most important and influential archaeological thinkers of his generation".[1]
Contents |
The son of Indologist Kamil Zvelebil, Zvelebil left his birth city of Prague with his family in 1968 following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The family first lived in the United States before returning to Europe and settling in the Netherlands. Zvelebil however studied in Oxford, England, and went on to gain a BA in Archaeology from Sheffield University and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he was one of the last students of Grahame Clark. Marek then taught at the University of South Carolina before returning to Sheffield in 1981 as a Research Fellow, later holding the positions of Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and finally Professor of European Prehistory. Overall he spent thirty years at Sheffield, with spells as a visiting professor at several institutions across Europe and North America.[1][2]
Zvelebil's primary research interest was in the European Mesolithic and Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, particularly in the Baltic region. His PhD research was on the transition to farming in Finland and the eastern Baltic. Over the course of his career he wrote or edited more than a hundred scholarly works, including seminal papers such as Hunters in Transition (1986) and “Plant Use in the Mesolithic and its role in the transition to farming” (1994). The latter, published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society was awarded the R. M. Baguley Prize. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Zvelebil was able to extend his research, looking at early farming cultures in eastern Europe and Siberian hunter-gatherer peoples. His field research included a co-directed major project in southeastern Ireland, as well as the Sheffield Department of Archaeology's long-running project in the Outer Hebrides.[1][2]
Zvelebil died on 7 July 2011, at the age of 59.[3][4]