Beatrice de Cardi, British archaeologist, Died at 102

Beatrice Eileen de Cardi was born on June 5, 1914, and died on July 5, 2016.

She was a British archaeologist.

She had specialised in the study of the Persian Gulf and the Baluchistan region of Pakistan.

De Cardi was president of the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia, and she was Secretary of the Council for British Archaeology from 1949 to 1973

She received her earliest training as an assistant at the digs conducted by Sir Mortimer Wheeler at the Iron Age fort of Maiden Castle in southern England.

When the Second World War was over, she became an assistant trade Commissioner in Karachi, Delhi, and Lahore, from which locations she conducted archaeological surveys in western Baluchistan.

Her work there involved collecting surface materials (including ceramic sherds, copper objects, bone and flint) from a number of sites in Jhalawan.

Later, she carried out work in the Persian Gulf, and launched a number of expeditions in the United Arab Emirates that yielded the first examples of Ubaid pottery in the region.

Because of her fieldwork more generally, de Cardi has previously stated, “I have never had any difficulties […] I am not a woman or a man when I am working in the Gulf or anywhere else. I am a professional and they have always accepted that.” As a result of her research a number of new sites were identified, dating from the early neolithic to the medieval period.

Beatrice was awarded the OBE for services to archaeology in 1973.

In her honour in 1976, he Council for British Archaeology founded an annual talk, the Beatrice de Cardi Lecture,.

During 1989 de Cardi was awarded the Al Qasimi Medal for archaeological services to Ras Al Khaimah, and in 1993 the Burton Memorial Medal by the Royal Asiatic Society.

She died in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital due complications from a fall that she suffered almost six weeks earlier.

Beatrice de Cardi passed away at 102 years old.