Sinclair Hood

Martin Sinclair Frankland Hood, (31 January 1917 – 18 January 2021), generally known as Sinclair Hood, was a British archaeologist and academic. He was Director of the British School at Athens from 1954 to 1962, and led the excavations at Knossos from 1957 to 1961."(Martin) Sinclair (Frankland) Hood." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Biography in Context. Web. 3 Jan. 2014. Gale Document Number: GALE, H1000046926
/ref> He turned 100 in January 2017 and died in January 2021, two weeks short of his 104th birthday.

As its review in the ''American Journal of Archaeology'' forecast, his ''The Arts in Prehistoric Greece'' became a "standard authoritative handbook for years to come" on Aegean art.

Early life and education

Martin Sinclair Frankland Hood was born in Cobh, (then Queenstown, and a British naval base), Ireland, in 1917. He was the only child of Martin Arthur Frankland Hood, a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, and Frances Ellis, the daughter of James Miller Winants, of Bayonne, New Jersey, United States, and stepdaughter of Lucius F. Donohoe, twice-elected Mayor of Bayonne. Hood's paternal ancestors were lowland Scots. His ancestor John Hood came to England in January 1660, during the English Civil War, with the Parliamentarian army of George Monck. He transferred to be under the command of Thomas Fairfax and settled in Yorkshire. His successor married a daughter of Francis Radclyffe, 1st Earl of Derwentwater.

Subsequent generations of Hoods moved south, and by the early nineteenth century were landed gentry of Nettleham Hall, Lincolnshire: they had strong ecclesiastical and military traditions. His father's sister, Grace Mary Crowfoot, was a pioneer of archaeological textiles, and married the educational administrator and archaeologist John Winter Crowfoot. Sinclair Hood's father died shortly after the First World War ended in November 1918. Sinclair was raised by his mother in London in an Anglo-Catholic milieu, not far from Bude on the northern coast of Cornwall.

After Harrow, Hood studied Classics and Modern History and received a Master of Arts degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1938. During World War II he was a conscientious objector serving with the Civil Defence Service and Holborn Stretcher Party. At his mother's behest, he apprenticed to a Chiswick architect for a time, which Hood considered a "great help for islater career" in that he learned to measure and draw. After the war, in 1947, he received a Diploma in Prehistoric European Archaeology from the University of London, having been taught by Kathleen Kenyon and V. Gordon Childe. Fellow students included Leslie Grinsell and Leslie R. H. Willis; senior by a year were Nancy Sandars, Grace Simpson, and Edward Pyddoke.Knossos, a Labyrinth of History: Papers presented in honour of Sinclair Hood, ed. Don Evely, British School at Athens, 1994, p. xix He learned the rigorous method of excavation and the stratigraphical approach pioneered by Mortimer Wheeler and Kathleen Kenyon, working with her in London (Southwark) and also as the last assistant of Leonard Woolley at Atchana (then in Turkey). Hood visited Greece (but not Crete) before the Second World War, and after the war was a student at the British School at Athens, and the British Institute at Ankara.

Academic career

Hood was assistant director of the British School at Athens from 1949 to 1951, and served as its director from 1954 to 1962. His work was done mostly in mainland Greece and in Turkey, but also in Mandatory Palestine and on the island of Crete. He excavated at Emporio on Chios between 1952 and 1955 , with several study sessions to 1961, and at Knossos between 1957 and 1961.

In the 1960s, Hood returned to England, settling in Great Milton near Oxford. He took no academic or museum positions. Early in his career he did not take a post as assistant professor at Birmingham. Later, by his own account, he "was asked to put in for the job to run the Ashmolean, but ... decided not to go for it".

A colleague noted, "He is a prime example of a teacher who has never taught, at least in the narrower academic sense of the word. His instruction is tacit, by example; or explicit, and then informal, in the trench or the museum or over the dinner table."

From the 1960s, Hood continued to excavate in Greece, and to write books. His contributions to academic research include ''The Bronze Age Palace at Knossos: Plan and Sections'' and the ''Archaeological'' ''Survey of the Knossos Area'' both published in 1981. He considered his major life work to be the catalogue of the Bronze Age masons' marks at Knossos: ''The Masons' Marks of Minoan Knossos'', edited by Lisa Bendall and published in 2020.

He gave the following advice to aspiring archaeologists:

Personal life

On 4 March 1957, Hood married Girton College, Cambridge-educated ( MA 1949) classicist Rachel Simmons (1931–2016), whom he had met conducting the excavations at Emporio. She had previously been a secretary to writer J. B. Priestley, and would later organise Adult Literacy at Thame. They had a son, Martin, and two daughters, Mary and Dictynna.

Select bibliography

For a fuller Bibliography of the Works of Sinclair Hood as published to 1994 and forthcoming from 1994, see ''Knossos: A Labyrinth of History'', 1994,  pages xix to xxv.

General Works

* ''The Home of the Heroes: The Aegean before the Greeks'' (London, 1967)
*''The Minoans – Ancient Peoples and Places'' (Thames & Hudson Ltd 1971)World Cat Author page
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*''The Arts in Prehistoric Greece'' (Pelican History of Art 1978, 2nd edn. 1992)
Excavation Reports
*''Prehistoric Emporio and Ayio Gala: V. 1: Excavations in Chios, 1938–55'' (British School at Athens Studies, 1982)
*With Cadogan, Gerald. ''Knossos Excavations 1957–61: Early Minoan'' (BSA, 2011).
Miscellaneous

* (with William Taylor) ''The Bronze Age Palace at Knossos: Plan and Sections'' (BSA Supplementary Volume 13; London 1981)
* (with David Smyth) ''Archaeological Survey of the Knossos Area'' (2nd edition revised and expanded; BSA Supplementary Volume 14; London 1981)
* ''The Masons' Marks of Minoan Knossos'' edited by Lisa Bendall (BSA Supplementary Volume 49, London 2020)

References

External links

Wright, James C. 1980. Review of The Arts in Prehistoric Greece, by Sinclair Hood. American Journal of Archaeology 84:538-539.

British School official website

Ambrosia searchBibliography on WorldCatPapers by Sinclair Hood

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hood, Sinclair
1917 births
2021 deaths
Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford
British archaeologists
British men centenarians
British conscientious objectors
Directors of the British School at Athens
People from Cobh
Minoan archaeologists
Archaeologists of the Bronze Age Aegean
Civil Defence Service personnel
Fellows of the British Academy