Joan Oates

Oates was born on 6 May 1928 to Harold Burdette Lines and Beatrice Naomi Lines.[3] She obtained a BA degree at Syracuse University in New York, before winning a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a PhD at Girton College, Cambridge, which she received in 1953.[3]

While participating in the excavation of Nimrud, she met David Oates (1927–2004). They married in 1956 and together had three children. They collaborated on a number of archaeological publications and excavations.[4][5]

Oates began her career as an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She married David Oates in 1956 and, as was expected of her, she gave up her career to support her husband. She was held a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1966 to 1967. In 1971, she was elected a fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. She was additionally a lecturer in the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East at the University of Cambridge from 1989. In 1995, she retired from full-time academia and was made a life fellow of Girton College. She has been a senior fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge since 1995.[6]

Since 1951, Oates has been involved in archaeological excavation in Iraq and Syria.[7] She has taken part in the excavations of Tell Brak since 1981, and has also been involved in those at Choga Mami, Nippur and Nimrud.[8] She was co-director with her husband David of the excavations at Tell Brak from 1988 to 2004, and she has been its sole director since his death in 2004.[2]

In 2004, Oates was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[9] In 2014, she was awarded the Grahame Clark Medal for Prehistoric Archaeology by the British Academy. The citation read: "to recognise her reputation as one of the leading authorities on Mesopotamian prehistory as well as her fundamental contributions to our understanding of ancient Near Eastern Civilisation."[10]

• Oates, David; Oates, Joan (1976). The rise of civilization. Oxford: Elsevier. ISBN 072900015X.
• Oates, Joan (1986). Babylon (Rev. ed.). New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500273847.
• Oates, Carolyn; Postgate, Carolyn; Oates, David (1997). The excavations at Tell al Rimah: the pottery. Warminster: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. ISBN 0856687006.
• Oates, David; Oates, Joan; McDonald, Helen (1998). Excavations at Tell Brak: Vol. 1: The Mitanni and Old Babylonian periods. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. ISBN 0951942050.
• Oates, David; Oates, Joan; McDonald, Helen (2001). Excavations at Tell Brak: Vol. 2: Nagar in the third millennium BC. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. ISBN 9780951942093.
• Oates, Joan; Oates, David (2001). Nimrud: an Assyrian imperial city revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. ISBN 0903472252.