Ancient World

James Mellaart

James Mellaart FBI (14 November 1925 – 29 July 2012) was a British-Dutch prehistorian and archaeologist. From 1959 to 1961 he was deputy director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA), then lecturer in prehistoric archaeology at Istanbul University until 1963. In 1964 he became lecturer in Anatolian archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology in London retiring in 1991. His discoveries at Hacılar, Beycesultan and Çatalhöyük left a lasting mark on prehistoric archaeology; over his career, however, Mellaart also built an extensive system of forgeries to support interpretations that were often speculative from the outset, deliberately trading on his considerable scholarly standing to lend these constructions an appearance of credibility—a strategy that, in retrospect, devalues even his genuine achievements. His manipulations bred distrust among colleagues and at times demonstrably hampered his further career, yet the full extent of his fabrications only became public after his death, not least because of systematic institutional concealment.

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See also

• ▸Balduin Saria
• ▸Fortifications of Rhodes
• ▸History of Dublin to 795

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