George F. Dales

Career

Dales served in the Marine Corps in China from 1945 to 1948. He spent 30 seasons of archeological excavations, starting at Nippur in 1957. Later, he excavated a number of the Indus Valley civilization sites. In 1959, he conducted an archeological survey in the Bandar Abbas region of southern Iran. In 1960, he made a coastal survey (along with his wife Barbara Bradley Dales, T. Cuyler Young, Jr and M.R. Mughal) that showed archeological evidence of trade routes on the Makran coast of Pakistan. In 1964-65, he excavated at Mohenjo-daro for one season. Between 1973 and 1979, Dales excavated at the Indus Valley civilization site of Balakot. From 1961 to 1963 he was a special lecturer at the University of Toronto, Canada. He then returned to the University of Pennsylvania as Assistant (1963–66) and then Associate (1966–72) Curator-in-Charge of the South Asia section of the Penn Museum, with concurrent appointments as Assistant and Associate Professor in the South Asia Regional Studies Department (where he was Co-Chairman in 1970-71).

At the University of California, Berkeley

In 1972, Dales joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley as a member of the Department of Near Eastern Studies. A year later this appointment was adjusted to a half-time appointment in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and a half-time appointment in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. This latter arrangement permitted him to offer courses in both ancient Near Eastern and ancient South Asian archaeology and history. From April 1979 through December 1980, he chaired the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. He was also the Chairman of Berkeley's Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies from 1980 to 1982.

Harappa Archeological Research Project

In 1986, he became one of the co-directors of the Harappa Archeological Research Project, involving a number of universities and institutions.

Death

He died in 1992 at Berkeley.