Basic Biographical Information
William Matthew Flinders Petrie was born on 3 June 1853 in Kent, England. The only child of a middle-class Victorian family, his father William Petrie was an inventor and surveyor, while his mother Anne was the only daughter of famed explorer and navigator, Matthew Flinders. After a severe childhood illness almost claimed his life, Petrie’s parents were advised to restrict his contact with other children to avoid any further risks to his health. As a result, Petrie never attended a formal school and was instead homeschooled by his mother; by 10, Petrie had taught himself chemistry and minerology (Drower 1985: 15–17). As a child and young teenager, his parents took him on many family holidays to measure and survey ancient British monuments, and this provided Petrie with a solid foundation in surveying and recording techniques. In 1874, Petrie and his father surveyed Stonehenge for the first time and completed the study by June 1877; after which young...
References
Drower, M.S. 1985. Flinders Petrie: A life in archaeology. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.
Drower, M.S. 1995. Flinders Petrie: A life in archaeology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Drower, M.S. 2012. Petrie, Sir (William Matthew) Flinders. In Oxford dictionary of national biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie. https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/archaeology-biographies/sir-william-matthew-flinders-petrie. Accessed 25 Mar 2013.
Gardiner, A.H. 1942. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, F.R.S., F.B.A. Nature 150: 204.
Persson, H. 2012. Collecting Egypt. Journal of the History of Collections 24: 3–13.
Petrie, W.M.F. 1904. Methods and aims in archaeology. London: Macmillan.
Petrie, W.M.F. 1990. Naukratis: 1885: The discovery of the earliest Greek colony in Egypt. The Classical Bulletin 66 (1): 3–7.
Sheppard, K.L. 2010. Flinders Petrie and eugenics at UCL. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 20: 16–29.
Sparks, R.T. 2013. Flinders Petrie through word and deed: Re-evaluating Petrie’s field techniques and their impact on object recovery in British mandate Palestine. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 145 (2): 143–159.
The Columbia Encyclopedia. 2012. Petrie, Sir William Matthew Flinders, 6th ed. http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/archaeology-biographies/sir-william-matthew-flinders-petrie. Accessed 25 Mar 2013.
Wheeler, M. 1953. Adventure and Flinders Petrie. Antiquity 27: 87–93.
Further Reading
Drower, M.S., ed. 2004. Letters from the desert: The correspondence of Flinders and Hilda Petrie. Oxford: Aris & Philips.
Petrie, W.M.F. 1932. Seventy years in archaeology. New York: H. Holt and Company.
Uphill, E.P. 1972. A bibliography of Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942). Journal of Near Eastern Studies 31: 356–379.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Stewart-Peters, E., Bowden, T.H. (2020). Petrie, William Matthew Flinders. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_248-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_248-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference HistoryReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities