Roger M. Jacobi

Roger Michael Jacobi (16 February 1947 – 9 December 2009) was a British archaeologist specialising in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Britain. Known for his encyclopaedic knowledge of British prehistory, Jacobi authored several key synthetic volumes and worked to catalogue, sequence and reanalyse collections from across Britain and northwestern Europe. Sections of his extensive personal archive were posthumously published as the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Artefact (PaMELA) database. to an English mother and German father. He attended Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood. There he took an early interest in archaeology, joining both the school's archaeology society and the Prehistoric Society,

After completing his doctorate, Jacobi taught Palaeolithic archaeology at Lancaster University and the University of Nottingham. He left Nottingham in 1994, first for a series of curatorial posts at the British Museum, then from 2001 a permanent research position with the 'Ancient Human Occupation of Britain' project. He never adopted computers, The latter volume was "the most widely available and accessible published data source for the Mesolithic period in Britain" for many years, forming the basis of the Mesolithic section of the National Monuments Record, and eventually only superseded with the posthumous publication of Jacobi's personal archive.

Honours and legacy Monograph published in honour of Jacobi in 2010: No Stone Unturned. Papers in Honour of Roger Jacobi. Lithic Studies Society Occasional Papers 9 Jacobi's 2004 paper on the Late Upper Palaeolithic of Gough's Cave won that year's Baguley Award from the Prehistoric Society. edited by Nick Ashton and Claire Harris, was published by the Lithic Studies Society in 2015. Proceeds from the sale of the book were used to set up a Jacobi Bursary for members of the Lithic Studies Society.

Jacobi maintained an extensive card index of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites, collections, and artefacts. After his death, Wessex Archaeology conducted an English Heritage-funded project to digitise this archive as the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Artefact (PaMELA) database, published in 2014.

Selected publications