author
Sir Arthur Evans
1851–1941
Best known for uncovering the palace of Knossos on Crete, this British archaeologist helped bring the Bronze Age Aegean world into public view. His work shaped how generations of readers imagined the civilization he called Minoan.
2 Audiobooks
Anthropology and the Classics Six Lectures Delivered Before the University of Oxford
by Sir Arthur Evans, W. Warde (William Warde) Fowler, F. B. (Frank Byron) Jevons, Andrew Lang, Gilbert Murray, Sir John Linton Myres
About the author
Born in England in 1851, Sir Arthur Evans became one of the most influential archaeologists of his time. He studied at Harrow and Brasenose College, Oxford, and later served as Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where he expanded the museum’s collections and scholarly reach.
Evans is most famous for his excavations at Knossos on Crete, which began in 1900. There he uncovered the remains of a large Bronze Age palace complex and argued that it belonged to a previously little-understood civilization, which he named the Minoan civilization after the legendary King Minos. His discoveries, writings, and reconstructions made Knossos one of the best-known archaeological sites in the world.
He was also a wide-ranging scholar with interests in numismatics, prehistory, and the eastern Mediterranean more broadly. Although some of his interpretations and restorations have been debated by later researchers, his role in opening up the study of Aegean prehistory remains central. He died in 1941.