included hominid remains but is mainly known for its Middle and Upper Paleolithic sequences. McBurney related it to the eastern Mediterranean and the cave sequence of Israel. He regarded the enigmatic pre-Aurignacian blade industry as a precursor of the Upper Paleolithic but also noted significant differences.

The Upper Paleolithic proper began with the Dabban and extended through great depths of Oranian (Iberomaurusian) deposits. McBurney was able to show that the coastal sequence was clearly different from those of the inland. He was thus one of the first archaeologists to document clearly and come to terms with contemporary rather than evolutionary variation in a Paleolithic region and to provide a possible cultural explanation for it.

These insights show that McBurney, who was sometimes described as a traditionalist with regard to Paleolithic interpretation, was greatly ahead of his time in many ways. His cultural ideas were more consonant with the “New Archaeology” than with any typecast view. Rather than having a supposed traditionalist’s notion of constant, gradual change, McBurney was particularly concerned with measuring rates of change. He therefore invested heavily in radiocarbon dates for calibrating the Haua Fteah sequence. The technique was new but well applied by H. de Vries at Groningen University.

McBurney was among the first Paleolithic archaeologists to favor quantitative techniques for the description of stone industries. Although his enthusiasm for statistical analysis was not shared by all his contemporaries, his suspicion of typologies, which he felt were not objectively applied, was farsighted. His skepticism about applications of the Bordes typology has been borne out by more recent work in Europe. His statistical approach is best exemplified by his analyses of the stone industries and faunal remains from the cave of Ali Tappeh in Iran near the Black Sea.

McBurney’s other fieldwork was wide-ranging, including, for example, that on the Lower Paleolithic at Hoxne, Suffolk. He carried out a reconnaissance of British Upper Paleolithic sites but was more preoccupied with the origins of the Upper Paleolithic. These he felt lay even farther east than the great sequences investigated by Garrod and others in Palestine. He led expeditions to Iran and Afghanistan on this search, but difficulties of time, logistics, and politics prevented him from excavating early deposits. Modern research has shown the earliest Upper Paleolithic emerging as technical change arising in the Negev and Lebanon.

His last great piece of fieldwork, parallel to that at Haua Fteah, was in the cave of La Cotte de Saint Brelade on the island of Jersey in the English Channel. This was carried out as a training excavation for the Cambridge Department of Archaeology over many successive Easter vacations and published posthumously under the editorship of P. Callow and K. Scott.

McBurney’s enthusiasm for the Paleolithic was tremendous and on a par with that of j. desmond clark for African prehistory. He had great influence, although relatively few people completed Ph.D.’s under his supervision. His firm and even uncompromising views distanced him from some potential followers of Paleolithic archaeology at a time when there was a great attraction to the economic prehistory championed by eric higgs at Cambridge as a rival calling. Yet McBurney’s intellectual rigor, which his students sometimes found restrictive, stimulated free thinking and scientific honesty. His former students speak fondly of him and carry forward many of his principles but have not been disciples in any strict sense.

He had no love of theory for its own sake. McBurney’s distinction is that he is remembered not for a typology but for two great excavations and a set of principles—a scientific code of practice for handling lithic material and cultural problems. He saw no connection between archaeology and social anthropology as practiced at Cambridge but was a supporter of ethnographic studies and ethno-archaeology. He had a great respect for the Soviet archaeologist segei semenov and worked hard to introduce microwear studies to Britain. These started to reach fruition through the work of his own students, such as Derek Roe and glyn isaac. This observation provides some indication of McBurney’s long-term influence. His was approximately the third generation of Paleolithic archaeologists