KEY POINTS:
Professor Peter Ucko, who has died at 68, was the former director of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. His work helped to give a voice to the indigenous peoples of the world whose archaeological heritage had hitherto been the domain of white researchers with a Western, rather than a native, agenda.
Ucko was essentially a specialist in "material culture", particularly prehistoric rock art and figurines. But he was also a passionate anti-racist who was deeply disturbed at the way in which, as he saw it, Western elites had appropriated the archaeological heritage of poorer, less influential cultures as representing the inheritance of all mankind, often to the detriment of those to whom it really belonged.
While traditional archaeologists saw their endeavours as having little relevance to contemporary social and political life, Ucko saw politics as key. While working as an adviser to the new Zimbabwean Government in the early 1980s, he claimed to have found evidence of the way in which archaeologists working under the government of Ian Smith had manipulated archaeological evidence to support the white-led regime.
