My brother Nicholas David, who has died aged 85, was a number one determine within the subject of ethnoarchaeology who undertook essential analysis in west Africa and have become professor of anthropology and archaeology on the College of Calgary.
Lengthy after he retired in 2002 Nic continued to obtain funding to hold out his analysis. He developed and maintained a web site concerning the folks of the Sukur within the Mandara mountains of Cameroon, and he contributed to including the Sukur cultural panorama to the Unesco World Heritage listing. In 2014, when Sukur was attacked by Boko Haram, Nic arrange the Boko Haram Victims fund and web site.
Born in Cambridge, to Nora (nee Blakesley), a metropolis councillor and from 1978 a Labour life peeress, as Girl David of Romsey, and Richard David, writer and head of the Cambridge College Press, Nic was the eldest of 4 youngsters. He was despatched to Horris Hill preparatory college aged eight, and, as I used to be seven years youthful, we solely ever spent the varsity holidays collectively. Summers have been spent in Polzeath, north Cornwall, the place our grandparents had a vacation home, and I at all times bear in mind the chocolate cake baked for him by our grandmother on his birthday.
After leaving Winchester school (the place his grandfather was a housemaster), he spent two years in nationwide service, which included a spell as a junior officer within the Nigeria Regiment, earlier than returning house to Cambridge College to learn archaeology and anthropology at Trinity Faculty.
I used to be 13 when Nic went to Trinity, and, as the one little one not despatched to boarding college, it was fantastic to have an older brother dwelling so shut. My reminiscences are of him educating me to hearken to jazz, taking part in the LP of Carmen Jones with the wonderful image of Dorothy Dandridge on the duvet, and educating me the best way to jive.
From there he moved to Harvard for a doctorate within the palaeoanthropology of south-western France, adopted by a educating job on the College of Pennsylvania (1967-71), throughout which he returned to west Africa to pursue the groundbreaking analysis on the fabric tradition, historical and fashionable, of Cameroonian communities that remained a central ardour for the remainder of his life.
After transient spells at College Faculty London (1971-74) and the College of Ibadan in Nigeria (1974-78), he moved to the chair at Calgary that he occupied for the remainder of his working life (1980-2002).
He had three youngsters along with his first spouse, Hilke Hennig. The wedding resulted in divorce, as did his subsequent marriage to Iva Hynes. His third spouse, Judy Sterner, an anthropologist he met on the College of Calgary in 1980 and married 5 years later, turned his accomplice and colleague within the west African undertaking.
Nic is survived by Judy, his youngsters, Ivo, Branwen and Til, three grandchildren, and his siblings, Sebastian, Eliza and me.
