Gale Sieveking

Gale de Giberne Sieveking (26 August 1925 – 2 June 2007) was a prehistoric archaeologist, best known for his work on flint and flint mines, particularly at sites such as Grimes Graves. He "played... an important part in the development of archaeology as a discipline" and particularly in the understanding of the prehistoric period. He was the son of BBC-pioneer Lancelot "Lance" De Giberne Sieveking, and half-brother to Fortean-writer Paul Sieveking.

Gale de Giberne Sieveking was born on 26 August 1925 in Cagnes-sur-Mer in the Alpes Maritimes, France. Although technically entitled, aged 17, "to choose between French and British nationality" due to his birthplace, in 1942 he had little choice "and, with certain regrets... relinquished his French nationality."

After leaving school, Sieveking "joined the Fleet Air Arm" training and positioned in places such as Canada, Colombo and Malta. He attended King's College, Cambridge, and as an ex-serviceman was financed by the post-war government for two years out of the three-year course. He read History, but was soon "captivated by archaeology and in his final year he studied prehistory."

He was a PhD student under Grahame Clark (learning "prehistory on Clark's excavations at Star Carr in the early 1950s"), but "left this [his PhD] unfinished" when in 1952, he married Ann Paull (1931-2012), the elder daughter of Vivian Hearle Paull and Rachel Alice (his first wife, nee Merz), and "was in need of an income." He was "offered a post as Deputy Director of Museums in Malaya" and accepted in 1953.

Taking up his post in 1953, and despite finding that "[o]pportunities for travelling and exploring were limited" under the then-"state of emergency" declared five years previously "by the British colonial government... as a response to Communist insurgency" he managed to open three regional "museums in Malacca, Seremban and Kuala Kangsa." He carried out excavations in Malaysia throughout the 1950s, excavating sites from all periods, including "a seventeenth-century Portuguese fort in Johore Lama", "an early Indian trading post in the mangrove swamps near Taiping" and "an exceptional buried hoard of Ming porcelain," also in Johore which included "several bowls of imperial quality."

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