Petrie meaning

William Matthew Flinders Petrie

Sir Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) is one of the most important and influential figures in the history of Egyptology. He was an archaeologist whose sixty years in the field produced an enormous amount of archaeological evidence for all periods of Egyptian history from prehistoric through to medieval times.

The thousand or so publications he produced are testament to his tireless endeavours to recover information before it was destroyed by modern developments in cultivation and by urbanisation. Such output was perhaps too prolific for the long-term, detailed and meticulous excavations that characterise archaeology today, but nevertheless Petrie's many achievements had a profound influence upon the disciplines of Egyptology and archaeology.

He advanced chronological methods through his invention of sequence dating for the Predynastic period, and in 1891 he established synchronisms with Greek pottery. Petrie was emphatic that everything excavated was to be noted, even seemingly small innocuous items, and this was perhaps one of his most important contr

What was the research and advocacy that took place by personnel associated with UCL and its sister institutions? Tabea Winkler investigates Flinders Petrie. 1907. Janus in Modern Life, focusing on chapter 4, “Revolution or Evolution?”.

Introduction

William Matthew Flinders Petrie, commonly known as Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and Archaeologist. Born in 1853 and educated privately at home, he first travelled to Egypt in 1880 and gained prominence for pioneering multiple revolutionary techniques in his field (Stewart-Peters, 2014, 5908). He is credited with introducing stratigraphic excavations in the Near East and revealing the earliest phases of Egypt’s history, with other notable achievements including his appointment in 1892 as the first chair of Egyptology in England. Well-known as an exceptionally quick worker, he published nearly one hundred books, dug over 50 sites and imported twelve complete mummies and sixty-five skulls to England during his lifetime (Drower, 2012). His influence on his field is evidenced by his colleague’s belief that he was the

In his youth, he began studying coins and weights as a boy. With his father he took up surveying, modifying available instruments to make them more precise. His only formal education was a University Extension Course in mathematics.

Under the influence of the pyramidology theories of Prof. Piazzi Smyth, he went to Egypt in 1880 to survey the pyramids of Gizeh. Petrie’s measurements proved that Piazzi Smyth’s theories were based on a logical fallacy, but he had become ‘hooked’ on the archaeology of Egypt. With two brief exceptions, he spent the rest of his career studying it. These brief exceptions were the periods he spent excavating in Palestine.

Although these interludes were brief, they were highly significant for Levantine archaeology. The first interlude was a six-week season of excavations at Tell el-Hesy (now transcribed as Tell el-Hesi) in the spring of 1890. During this short period he introduced into Palestine the concept that a tell is a manmade mound of successive, superimposed ‘cities’. He established the dating of these ‘ci

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