Movius, Hallam L. (Hallam Leonard), 1907-1987

Movius graduated from Harvard in 1902 and taught anthropology at Harvard.

Hallam Leonard Movius, Jr. was born in Newton, MA on November 28, 1907 to a family in finance, and after graduating from the Berkshire School, came to Harvard College in 1926 to pursue a career in football. The fascinations of classes with Dr. Earnest A. Hooton in European archaeology and Dr. Vladimir Fewkes on the Bronze Age of Central Europe compelled Movius to receive his B.A. in anthropology in 1930, his Master's in the same subject in 1933, and his doctorate in said subject in 1937. A giant in the field of stone age archaeology and palaeoanthropology was launched. Movius served as a Research Associate in Anthropology at the Peabody Museum from 1935-38, and as the Assistant Curator for Palaeolithic Archaeology from 1939 to 1941 and from 1946-49.

His graduate work included field seasons in Czechoslovakia at the Neolithic village of Homolka under Fewkes' supervision; the cave of Mugharet-es-Skhul in Israel in 1932, and at Harvard's Irish Survey from 1932 to 1936 with Dr. Hugh O'Neill Hencken. He met Australian and Cambridge University archaeology student Nancy Champion de Crespigny on the Irish Survey in 1935, and they were married in the following year. In 1937, the Moviuses went to Burma to join Helmut de Terra and Teilhard de Chardin's prehistory expedition, later joining de Chardin in Java for a tour of early hominid sites. Movius' seminal publications on the Lower Paleolithic industries of India, China, Burma and Java resulted in what was later beatified by Carleton Coon as "Movius's Line," which demarcated the great chopper/chopping tool complex from the hand axe cultures of the West by a line running through India from northwest to southeast.

During World War II, Movius was a consultant to the War Department and was commissioned 1st Lieutenant in the Army Air Forces in 1942. He was attached to the 12th Air Force as an intelligence officer and served 37 months overseas in the Mediterranean campaign. Movius was decommissioned in 1946 with the Legion of Merit and five campaign stars. He resumed his teaching duties at Harvard and was appointed Curator of Palaeolithic Archaeology in 1948, Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology in the same year, Associate Professor of Anthropology in 1950, and full Professor in 1958.

In addition to his interests in Ireland and South and Central Asia, Movius' most significant work took place in Upper Palaeolithic France at La Colombiře (site of the "Magic Pebble" excavation) in the Ain Valley and the Abri Pataud rock shelter in the village of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne at which he was one of the first archaeologists to use carbon-14 dating to systematically determine the precise age of his findings. At Abri Pataud Movius was able to establish 14 different levels of occupation between c. 20,000 B.C. and 32,000 B.C.

Movius retired from his teaching in 1974, four years after a stroke and his induction into the order of the Chevaliers des Arts et Lettres in France, and from his duties at the museum in June of 1976. He died a much honored and treasured scholar on May 30, 1987 at age 79.