William Flinders Petrie

Sir William Flinders Petrie [1853-1942]

  

British archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie was one of the pioneers of the science, conducting archaeology primarily in Egypt and Palestine.

He excavated at the Pyramids of Giza between 1880 and 1882, and conducted surveys in the Fayyum Depression, and excavated at predynastic cemeteries of Naqada, Diaspolis Parva and Abadiya.  It was in these last studies that Petrie developed his still-very-useful seriation analysis, which compared percentages of styles of artifacts to relatively date sites and occupations. 

Seriation was not of practical use for anybody but Petrie until the 1970s, when computers could be brought to bear on the massive amount of data. Remarkably, Petrie did it with slips of paper.

  Professionally, Petrie was associated with the Egypt Exploration Fund and Palestine Exploration Fund, and was the first Edwards professor of Egyptology at the University of London.