Euan MacKie
British archaeologist and anthropologist (1936–2020)
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Biography
MacKie was educated at Whitgift School, Croydon between 1946 and 1954 and later graduated with a degree in Archeology & Anthropology from St John's College, Cambridge, in 1959, and had a PhD from the University of Glasgow where he was an honorary research fellow. He was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1973. Keeper of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1974 and Deputy Director from 1986 - 1995, he took early part-time retirement in 1995 with full retirement in 1998. He was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (FSA Scot.), an Honorary Research Fellow of Hunterian Museum until 2005 and an Honorary Research Associate of the National Museums of Scotland from 2007. Mackie was also a member of the Prehistoric Society and Glasgow Archaeological Society, of which he was president in the 1980s.
MacKie spent six months in Central America as member of the Cambridge Expedition to British Honduras excavating Mayan archaeological sites in British Honduras (now Belize) between 1959 and 1960. At the medium-sized ceremonial centre of Xunantunich the application of the British system of recording every layer exposed, including the surface deposits, produced dramatic evidence for the sudden destruction of the site in the later 9th century, the partial clearance of fallen rubble and then its final abandonment by the elite groups who had lived in it. Thereafter peasants seem to have lived among the ruins. An earthquake was suggested as the most likely agent for this destruction, although this is controversial to many. Subsequent major excavations at the site in the 1990s by UCLA do not seem to have recognized the same phenomena.
On returning to the United Kingdom in 1960 he worked for six months as temporary assistant in the old Department of Ethnography in the British Museum before taking up a curatorial post in the Hunterian Museum of the University of Glasgow in charge of prehistoric collections, later in charge of ethnographical collections as well. His work primarily involved research, fieldwork, excavations and displays. He became deputy director there in 1985 but voluntarily relinquished the post to become a semi-retired senior curator from 1995-1998. Since full retirement he continued to carry out research, to write and to lecture. His research and general interests were varied, and he wrote on the topics in the following section.
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Research topics
The nature of archaeological evidence and how inferences are made from it
This was an ongoing concern for MacKie, which was stimulated by growing interest in some controversial viewpoints in archaeology, notably regarding the vitrified hill forts of Scotland and past changes in the natural environment, their nature and causes. When investigating a topic which is regarded as extreme by most colleagues, how can one know if one is being rational or just perverse? He therefore attempted an analysis of the nature of non-literate archaeological evidence, following on the work of C F C Hawkes, and concluded, in contrast to Hawkes, that there is a fundamental difference between the way economic and technological inferences are made, directly from the evidence and the way social inferences are made, indirectly and by the use of analogy. Ian Hodder has come to similar conclusions. This contrast is extremely important, for example, when considering the type of society which existed in Late Neolithic Britain and which might have achieved remarkable things in the realms of astronomy, geometry and measurement. Is it fair, for example, to maintain that these achievements are improbable, even impossible, because we 'know' that the societies of the time were too primitive to do such things? Is an alternative model of Neolithic society feasible which is equally well grounded in the archaeological evidence but which can accommodate these new ideas? In either case the model of Neolithic society which we favour has to be quite lightly anchored to the hard archaeological evidence and should be changed if evidence appears that contradicts it, and should never be used by itself to question the relevance or reliability of such evidence.
MacKie also conjectured that personal motivation might play a part in determining an archaeologist's attitudes to orthodox and unorthodox ideas. Although this is obviously tricky ground which is full of intellectual pitfalls, and which could come up against the deep-seated belief that every academic probably has – that his or her own rationality is beyond question, he decided to air some of the problems by making a tentative list of the rational and irrational reasons for opposing and supporting unorthodox ideas. The hope – not realized so far – then was that by bringing these issues into the open, a more informed debate about British archaeoastronomy for example might result. His professional demeanour was adroitly summarised by Noel Fojut in his preface to In the Shadow of the Brochs as, "His genial but slightly aloof manner, like that of all the best uncles, always promised that provided the rules are obeyed, fun is in the offing."
His research interests included brochs, rotary querns, the Hunterian's early ethnographical collections, the voyages of Captain Cook, the iron Age and prehistory of northern Britain and the evolution and foreign influences of material culture. Further interests included cultural diffusionism, 18th-century architecture of Scotland, archaeological methodology and museum design. He led several major excavations along with studies of stone circles and standing stones of the later neolithic period, in particular their astronomical and calendrical qualities. He also conducted surveys into the level of skill in astronomy and geometry existed in Neolithic Britain. His bibliography includes over 120 books, articles and papers.
MacKie braved to speak out on several controversial areas of science, suggesting a method of testing various Catastrophism theories in the New Scientist in 1973. He claimed "It is possible, using radiocarbon dates, to devise a simple quantitative test." In "Science and Society in Prehistoric Britain", he became one of the very few archaeologists to put the unit of the Megalithic Yard to scientific test. He noticed that two squares of a side equal to the Egyptian remen generates a root five diagonal that is very close to the megalithic yard. He also showed the links to the Sumerian šu-du3-a, ancient mining rods used in the Austrian Tyrol and an Indus Valley measuring rod excavated from the Mohenjo-daro site. He was importantly noted for being the first person to suggest the term Archaeoastronomy, however he modestly claimed "...the genesis and modern flowering of archaeoastronomy must surely lie in the work of Alexander Thom in Britain between the 1930s and the 1970s."