Emyr Estyn Evans

Emyr Estyn Evans CBE (29 May 1905 – 12 August 1989) was a Welsh geographer and archaeologist, whose primary field of interest was the Irish neolithic.

Early life He was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, the son of a Welsh Presbyterian minister, George Owen Evans. He was educated at Welshpool Intermediate (County) School in Montgomeryshire and University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he read Geography and Anthropology. Illness forced him to turn down a post at Oxford University and worked instead for geographer and zoologist H. J. Fleure, preparing contributions for the 14th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. He was a key founder of the Ulster Folk Museum.

His academic activities focused initially on relationships between prehistoric and proto-historic communities and their natural environment. In 1931 he was awarded an MA (Wales) for a thesis entitled A Study of the Origins and Distributions of some Late Bronze Age Industries in Western Europe. In 1938 he was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and in 1939 awarded a DSc for published work. He led an archaeological survey of Northern Ireland which discovered many previously unrecorded megalithic monuments. These were described in A Preliminary Survey of the Ancient Monuments of Northern Ireland (1940), which he published with D. A. Chart and H. C. Lawlor. In 1937–38 he excavated the largest Neolithic site in Northern Ireland, that at Lyle's Hill, Country Antrim.

He was also President of the British Association Section E (Geography) (1958) and Section H (Anthropology) (1960), President of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society (1967–1977) and of the Institute of British Geographers (1970). He was appointed a CBE in 1970 for services to the community.

Private life He died in Belfast on 12 August 1989. He had married Gwyneth, the daughter of Professor Abel E. Jones, and had four sons.