Robert Hamilton

Robert William Hamilton, FBA (26 November 1905 – 25 September 1995) was a British archaeologist and academic. He was senior lecturer in Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1949 to 1956 and a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1959 to 1972. He was keeper (head) of the Ashmolean Museum from 1962 to 1972.

Early life Robert Hamilton was born on 26 November 1905. His father was William Stirling Hamilton, a British civil servant working for the Indian Civil Service in the British Raj. His paternal great-grandfather was Sir William Hamilton who was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh.

From the age of four, Hamilton was educated at Girton Hall School in Torquay, Devon. During this time, his parents were living in India and so he was accompanied and brought up by a nurse. He spent 1911 and 1912 in India with his family, and experienced the life of a child of the colonial elite. He then returned to England and boarded at Copthorne School in Crawley, Sussex. He then matriculated into Magdalen College, Oxford to study classics. His career in the Near East was interrupted by World War II and the Jewish insurgency in Palestine.

Honours Hamilton was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1960.

Selected works