Frederick Zeuner
Frederick Everard Zeuner(8 March 1905 – 5 November 1963) was a Germanpalaeontologistandgeological archaeologistwho specialized on thePleistocene epoch.He was a contemporary ofGordon Childeat theInstitute of Archaeologyof theUniversity of London.[1]Zeuner proposed a detailed scheme of correlation and dating of European climatic andprehistoriccultural events on the basis ofMilankovitch cycles.[2]He also worked onOrthopteraninsects,[3]with thebush cricketgenusZeuneriananamed after him. He has been considered as a pioneer of environmental archaeology.
Life and work
[edit]Zeuner was born in Berlin, Germany. He studied at Berlin followed by Tubingen and finally received his Ph.D. from theUniversity of Breslauin 1927. At Breslau he was a student of Walther Soergel. After working as a Privatdozent at the University of Breslau from 1927-1930 and a lecturer in geology at the University of Freiburg from 1931-34 he emigrated to England after being dismissed from university because his wife Etta was Jewish. He was aided by the Academic Assistance Council (founded byWilliam Beveridgelater known as theCouncil for Assisting Refugee Academics- CARA) worked as a research associate at the British Museum (Natural History) from 1934-36. During World War II he worked with the Anti-Locust Research Centre. Zeuner became a lecturer in geochronology at the University of London's Institute of Archaeology from 1936 to 1945 thanks to assistance fromMortimer Wheeler.He received a D. Sc. from the university of London in 1942 for his work on fossilEnsifera.In 1944 he was promoted to a professorship. From 1946 to 1963 he was professor, the first in Environmental Archaeology, and head of environmental archaeology at the University of London's Institute of Archaeology, where postgraduate students includedAndrée Rosenfeld.His most influential book wasThe Pleistocene Period(1945). In it he made use of chronology estimation based on sea-levels, glacial moraine, loess and river terraces. This was followed by another book onDating the Past(1946). He was involved in examinations of excavated material from the Neolithic and he made use of radiocarbon dating. This would lead to another major workA History of Domesticated Animals(1963). He was a member of the Geologische Vereinigung in Germany and was admitted to the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (1952). He was also a member of theRoyal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.[4][5]He died from a cardiac arrest.[6]
Selected publications
[edit]- Dating the Past: An Introduction to Geochronology.London: Methuen, 1946.
- Prehistory in India: Four Broadcast Talks on Early Man.India: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, 1951.
- The Pleistocene Period: Its Climate, Chronology, and Faunal Successions.Hutchinson Scientific & Technical, 1959.
- "Fossil insects from the Lower Lias of Charmouth, Dorset" inBulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Geology,7:155-171 [M. Clapham/J. Karr/M. Clapham]
- A history of domesticated animals.New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
References
[edit]- ^"Alumni Reflections: Charles Thomas" inArchaeology International,Issue 15 (2011-2012), pp. 119-123.
- ^Wright, H.E. (1993)Global Climates Since the Last Glacial Maximum.University of Minnesota Press, p. 1.ISBN9780816621453
- ^Zeuner FE (1941) The classification of the Decticinae hitherto included inPlatycleisFieb. orMetriopteraWesm. (Orthoptera, Saltatoria).Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London91: 1–50, figs. 1–45.
- ^Sutcliffe, Anthony J. (1998)."Frederic Everard Zeuner - a student's appreciation and appraisal".Geologia Sudetica.31:129–132.
- ^Smith, Claire, ed. (2014).Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology.Springer. pp. 7955–7957.
- ^Valoch, K. (1963)."Profesor Frederick Everard Zeuner"(PDF).Anthropologie(in Czech).1(3): 87.
