Ann Patricia Outhwaite Phillips, MA, PhD

Pat Phillips was born on 29 September 1935 and went to Nottingham High School. After reading history at Nottingham University she decided on a career in archaeology and spent some time working in California, where she completed an MA at UCLA in her spare time before returning to study for a doctorate at London University’s Institute of Archaeology. In 1970 she was awarded a research fellowship at Sheffield University and appointed lecturer two years later. In 1979 she was promoted to senior lecturer and, in 1984, reader, making her one of the most senior women in the university before taking early retirement in 1990. Phillips’ fluency in European languages enabled her to keep abreast of published work on the continent as soon as it came out, and her own fieldwork was centred on the western Mediterranean. Her first monograph, Early Farmers of West Mediterranean Europe (1975), covered the Neolithic period, and introduced English-speakers to new finds and developments in the area, not yet widely known at home. New scientific analytical techniques always interested her and she was one of the first academics from the west to visit the Leningrad lithic microwear laboratory of Semenov. Typically, she had learnt Russian in readiness for the trip. Phillips was a member of the Science Based Archaeology Committee of SERC from 1982 to 1985 and the large number of postgraduate students she supervised, specialising in lithics, blood residues and archaeometallurgy are to be found in key positions in three continents. To her students and colleagues Phillips was always approachable and supportive; known as ‘Aunty Pat’ to a generation of undergraduates who did not hesitate to confide in her she nevertheless applied the most rigorous standards where work was concerned. She maintained her links with the United States, training as an airplane pilot over there (where it was cheaper than in Europe), and her second monograph, The Prehistory of Europe (1980) was published by the Indiana University Press. A decade of early retirement, initially to look after her mother and brother, was not the daunting episode it might have been to a less resilient character. Phillips made time to continue her archaeological research, especially in Spain, Puerto Rico and Australia during her husband’s sabbaticals, to read, write articles and enjoy the company of friends and colleagues. She died on 17 August 1999.