While she was participating in the excavation of Nimrud, she met David Oates (1927–2004). They married in 1956 and had three children. They collaborated on a number of archaeological publications and excavations.[6][7]
Joan Oates died on 3 February 2023, at the age of 94.[8] Her funeral was held in Girton College Chapel on 23 February 2023.[8]
Academic career
Oates' PhD studies were initially supervised by Dorothy Garrod and later by Max Mallowan. In the course of her studies she visited the British School of Archaeology in Baghdad and travelled with Mallowan to Nimrud.[5] During this time she became acquainted with novelist Agatha Christie, who based the character Sally Finch on her in the novel Hickory Dickory Dock.[5] She completed her PhD in 1954 and returned to the USA.
Oates began her career as an assistant curator in the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and continued to visit Nimrud with Max Mallowan each year.[5]
She married David Oates in 1956 and they worked together on archaeological excavations in Nimrud, Ain Sinu, Nippur and Choga Mami.[9][10] The Choga Mami excavation was directed by Joan Oates.[5] After the birth of her children, Oates played a less active role in excavations, but continued to participate by documenting the finds, particularly potsherds.[5] This continued involvement contributed to her securing a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1966 to 1967. In 1968 they left Iraq due to the political instability and returned to Cambridge.[5]
In 1971 Joan Oates was elected a fellow of Girton College, Cambridge and Director of Studies in both Oriental Studies and Archaeology at that college, becoming a Senior Research Fellow in 1989.[5] She carried out excavations at Tell Brak in Syria 14 times between 1971 and 1993 and continuing to visit the site after her retirement.[10][5] She was co-director with her husband David of the excavations at Tell Brak from 1988 to 2004, and became its sole director after his death in 2004.[2] In 1988 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, and in 1989 she became a lecturer in the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East at the University of Cambridge.
Her many valuable contributions to archaeology include establishing that the origins of Tell Brak were 1000 years earlier than previously thought and identifying a previously unknown stage in the development of writing.[5]
David Oates and Joan Oates, The Rise of Civilization, Oxford: Elsevier 1976. ISBN072900015X.
Joan Oates, Babylon, New York: Thames & Hudson, revised ed. 1986. ISBN0500273847.
Joan Oates, Carolyn Postgate and David Oates, The Excavations at Tell al Rimah: The Pottery, Warminster: British School of Archaeology in Iraq 1997. ISBN0856687006.
David Oates, Joan Oates and Helen McDonald, Excavations at Tell Brak, Volume 1, The Mitanni and Old Babylonian Periods, Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1998. ISBN0951942050.
David Oates, Joan Oates and Helen McDonald, Excavations at Tell Brak, Volume 2, Nagar in the Third Millennium BC, Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2001. ISBN9780951942093.
Joan Oates and David Oates, Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed, London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq 2001. ISBN0903472252.
References
^"OATES, Dr Joan". British Academy Fellows. British Academy. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
^ ab"Team Members". Tell Brak. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
^ abcdefghijkShenton, Caroline; Thompson, Dorothy (2023). "Obitury: Dr Joan Oates FBA". The Year: The Annual Review of Girton College Cambridge: 130-134.
^"Obituaries: Professor David Oates, MA, FSA, FBA (1927-2004)". Iraq. 66. British Institute for the Study of Iraq: v–vii. 2004.
^"David Oates; Obituary". The Times. No. 68043. 7 April 2004. p. 26.