Dominique Petronella Margaret Collon, (born 18 May 1940) is a Belgian-born academic, author, archaeologist and former curator at the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in London who has worked and travelled extensively in the

Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...

in Syria, Turkey and Iraq. She is an authority on

cylinder seals A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in width, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...

. Collon was born in

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

in 1940, the daughter of Petronella and Alexandre Collon. In 1962 she was a student at the Institute of Archaeology in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

where she was studying for the Postgraduate Diploma in Western Asiatic Archaeology. As an archaeologist Collon excavated in Turkey under her uncle who was the Director of the

British Institute at Ankara The British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), formerly British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, is a research institute that supports, promotes, and publishes research into the humanities and social sciences of Turkey and the Black Sea region. The ...

; in

Kültepe Kültepe ( Turkish: ), also known under its ancient name Kaneš (Kanesh, sometimes also Kaniš/Kanish) or Neša (Nesha), is an archaeological site in Kayseri Province, Turkey. It was already a major settlement at the beginning of the 3rd mille ...

with Tahsin Özgüç in 1964; and with

Seton Lloyd Seton Howard Frederick Lloyd, (30 May 1902 – 7 January 1996), was an English archaeologist. He was President of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (President, 1948–1961), Pro ...

and Charles A. Burney at in 1965.Open letter to Dominique Collon from David Hawkins - The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (2015) - Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
/ref> She took her PhD at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1971 with her thesis on ''The Seal Impressions of Tell Atchana/Alalakh'' and which was published in 1975.Biography of Dominique Collon - encyclopedia.com
/ref> From 1973 to 1976, Collon was in

Tunis Tunis (, ') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Tunisia. The greater metropolitan area of Tunis, often referred to as "Grand Tunis", has about 2,700,000 inhabitants. , it is the third-largest city in the Maghreb region (after Casabl ...

where she excavated the

mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

s of Utica and other sites and prepared the reports for publication. On her return to the United Kingdom she specialised in the study of the

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

displayed on ancient

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

n and

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

cylinder seal A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in width, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...

s. Dr Collon was with the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities (later Ancient Near East and later still Middle East) at the

from 1964 to 1968, and again from 1977 to 1988; she gained a full-time position at the Museum as curator of Western Asiatic Antiquities from 1988 until her retirement in 2005;Biography of Dominique Collon
-

website her retirement was marked by a symposium held at

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College ( ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by Bishop of Winchester William of Waynflete. It is one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges, as of 2022, and ...

in June 2005. From 1979 to 2010 she was the co-editor of ''Iraq'', the journal of the

British Institute for the Study of Iraq The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI) (formerly the British School of Archaeology in Iraq) is the only body in Britain devoted to research into the ancient civilizations and languages of Mesopotamia. It was founded in 1932 and its ai ...

, while from 1985 to 1989 she edited the Ancient Near East section of the ''

Grove Dictionary of Art ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

''. Collon is a Fellow of the

Society of Antiquaries of London The Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) is a learned society of historians and archaeologists in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1707, received its royal charter in 1751 and is a Charitable organization, registered charity. It is based ...

and a

corresponding member The corresponding member is one of the possible membership types in some organizations, especially in the learned societies and scientific academies. This title existed or exist in the Soviet Union, GDR, Polish People's Republic, Czechoslovak S ...

of the

Deutsches Archäologisches Institut The German Archaeological Institute (, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office of Germany. Status, tasks and goals The Institute c ...

Publications

*(With others) ''Sondages au flanc sud du Tell de Qala'at el-Mudiq: néolithique, chalcolithique, bronze ancien'', Centre belge de recherches archéologiques à Apamée de Syrie (Brussels, Belgium), 1975. *''The Seal Impressions from Tell Atchana/Alalakh'', Butzon & Bercker (Kevelaer, Germany), 1975. *''Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinders Seals II, Akkadian-Post Akkadian-Ur III Periods'', British Museum Publications (London, England), 1982. *''The Alalakh Cylinder Seals'', British Archeological Reports (London, England), 1982. *''Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals III, Isin/Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods'', British Museum Publications (London, England), 1986. *''First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East'', British Museum Press (London, England), 1987, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1988, revised edition, British Museum Press (London, England), 2005. *''Near Eastern Seals'', University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1990. *''Ancient Near Eastern Art'', University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1995. *(Editor and contributor) ''7,000 Years of Seals'', British Museum Press (London, England), 1997. *''Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals IV, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Periods'', British Museum Press (London, England), 2001. Collon has also contributed to books by others, including ''Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum'', Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1995; to reference books; and shorter publications. She was the co-editor of the academic journal ''Iraq'' (1979—2010).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collon, Dominique 1940 births Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni People associated with the British Museum Employees of the British Museum Belgian archaeologists Belgian curators British women archaeologists British archaeologists Archaeologists of the Near East Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Living people Belgian emigrants to the United Kingdom Belgian women curators