<!-- "none" is preferred when the title is sufficiently descriptive; see WP:SDNONE -->

Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1939.

Excavations

  • Major excavation of Ostia Antica in Italy begins (continues to 1942).
  • University of Pennsylvania project at Piedras Negras, Guatemala ends (started 1931).
  • Palace of Nestor in Pylos by Carl Blegen (resumed 1952-69).
  • Tomb of Psusennes at Tanis by Pierre Montet (started 1928).
  • Deserted medieval village of Seacourt near Oxford by Rupert Bruce-Mitford (June&ndash;July 15).
  • Medieval settlement at Bere, North Tawton, England, by Martyn Jope.
  • Bowl barrow at Knap Hill, Wiltshire, England, by C. W. Phillips.

Publications

  • Grahame Clark: Archaeology and Society.

Finds

  • May
  • Sutton Hoo ship burial unearthed by Basil Brown and Edith Pretty in Suffolk, England. On July 28 the Sutton Hoo helmet is excavated.
  • Battle of Thermopylae site unearthed by Spyridon Marinatos in Greece.
  • August 25: The Lion-man statue is discovered in the Hohlenstein-Stadel, a cave in southern Germany.
  • Matthew Stirling discovers the bottom half of Stela C at Tres Zapotes in Veracruz, Mexico.
  • Wyllys Andrews discovers the Maya civilization site of Kulubá in Yucatán, Mexico.

Miscellaneous

  • May 6: Dorothy Garrod is elected to the Disney Professorship of Archaeology in the University of Cambridge, the first woman to hold an Oxbridge chair.

Births

  • January 15: Neil Cossons, English industrial archaeologist and museum director
  • July 12: Peter Addyman, English archaeologist
  • November 6: Peter J. Reynolds, English experimental archaeologist (d. 2001)
  • December 10: Barry Cunliffe, English archaeologist
  • November 27: Malcolm Todd, English archaeologist (d. 2013)

Deaths

  • March 2: Howard Carter, English Egyptologist (b. 1874)

References