John Hayes (21 April 1938 – 27 February 2024)
The British School at Athens mourns the passing of archaeologist Dr. John Hayes. Hayes was a specialist in the pottery of the Mediterranean, working as a curator of the Greek & Roman Department at Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and a member of the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity.
“With his passing, the world of Mediterranean archaeology has lost one of its most influential characters. Hayes was not an excavator but a specialist in the study of finds, his primary field being the pottery of the Greek and Roman periods.
After completing his degree in 1960, he was engaged in the following four years on research for his PhD on ‘Late Roman pottery in the Mediterranean’ under the supervision of Professor Jocelyn Toynbee. He was supported in this period by various awards, including a Walston Studentship at the British School at Athens. There, he made contact with the American excavators in the Athenian Agora, and in particular with Professor Henry Robinson, who introduced him to the late Roman tablewares with which his name will forever now be associated. The resulting thesis was extended and published in 1972 as Late Roman Pottery.
In 1968 he joined the staff of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and there spent the rest of his professional employment, rising to the position of Curator of the Greek and Roman Department. While in Toronto, he published a succession of catalogues of the museum’s collection, ranging from Greek, Etruscan and Roman pottery to ancient lamps, metalware and glass. During his time in Canada, Hayes had ample time for study leave which enabled him to participate in archaeological fieldwork around the Mediterranean, and this activity continued even more intensely following his move to Oxford in 1991. He was involved in projects in Tunisia (Carthage), Libya (Tocra, Apollonia), Egypt (Alexandria, Red Sea ports), Israel (Jerusalem), Lebanon (Beirut), Cyprus (Paphos, Kourion), Turkey (Istanbul, Troy), Greece (Athens, Isthmia, Sparta, Nicopolis, Mytilene), Croatia (Adriatic Islands Project) and several sites in Italy.
Hayes was a long-standing member of the Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautores, an association for the study of Roman pottery. The papers which he presented there were intermittent, but he was always open to approaches from colleagues, both old and young, in search of guidance or advice. Over the course of his life, his standing was recognized and celebrated through a number of memberships and awards. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Society of Canada, a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute and in 1990 received the Gold Award of the Archaeological Institute of America.
On any site that Hayes visited, he was instantly recognizable for his wild and bushy hair, he was open and free with his vast knowledge and advice, and was always approachable. He devoted his entire adult life to his research. His legacy, as a taxonomist of material culture, has surely been unmatched since the late nineteenth century (the classifications of Dragendorff and Dressel come to mind). At the same time, the culture of openness and collegiality which he exemplified surely caused a younger generation to see that this benefited the field of study more than the intellectual possessiveness and secrecy displayed by some of their elders; this too, will have had an enduring effect.”
– extracted from an obituary written by Philip Kenrick
image: John Hayes at the Sparta Theatre Excavations 2008 © BSA