William Lancaster: anthropologist and ethnographic mentor

Abstract

William Lancaster, in many senses, rewrote the book on interdisciplinary research in the archaeology of nomadic peoples in the Middle East. And not just the Middle East, as his work, together with that of his wife, Fidelity, has resonance across Inner Asia, inspiring and encouraging broader thinking on the nature of pastoral peoples. William’s involvement in Middle Eastern archaeology began early, when Kathleen Kenyon arranged a position for him as a photographer for Peter Parr on his Petra excavations, and later for Diana Kirkbride at Beidha. He enjoyed this introduction to the Middle East, but found himself somewhat more interested in the living populations than those of the dead. To pursue this further, he enrolled as a language student at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies in Lebanon. His practical studies took him across the Middle East, engaging with a variety of different communities and reading histories and travellers’ accounts of the region in earlier times. After he returned to England, he followed up his interests further by enrolling for a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge. In 1972, William, Fidelity and their children came to Jordan, and for the next eight years lived for protracted periods of time with the Rwala Bedouin in north-eastern Jordan and at the northern end of the Nefudh in Saudi Arabia, drawing on Burckhardt’s (1831) and Musil’s (1928) works as background, but with the aim of understanding the subtleties and complexities of the living population. In preparation for this work, William went to study for a short time under Frederik Barth at the University of Bergen. The insights he gained from Barth were deeply influential on the Lancasters’ subsequent work with the Rwala (Lancaster 2022). The volume arising from this work, The Rwala Bedouin Today (Lancaster 1981), is regarded as a landmark study in the field. In the 1980s William taught anthropology for a year at Yarmouk University and became involved with several of the British archaeological field projects active at the time. In 1991, following the first Gulf War, and a difficult time for Jordan, he took on the Directorship of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (BIAAH), now the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), a position he held until 1994. William brought to the job a close relationship with the Jordanian Royal Family, particularly HRH Prince Hassan. He also strengthened ties with the British Embassy, obtaining sub-diplomatic status for the CBRL and welcome access to the Embassy Commissary. Through his deep involvement with the