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John Desmond Clark was a British archaeologist noted particularly for his work on prehistoric Africa.
Educated at Monkton Combe School near Bath, J. Desmond Clark graduated with a B.A. from Christ's College at the University of Cambridge and became the curator of Northern Rhodesia's Livingstone Memorial Museum in 1937. A year later Clark married Betty Baume, who would accompany him on a number of expeditions throughout his life. Clark served in the military during World War II as well as carrying out archaeological fieldwork in the Horn of Africa. Following the war, he returned to Cambridge, completing his Ph.D. in 1947.
Clark then returned to Northern Rhodesia to serve once more as the Museum's director. In 1953, Clark ordered an excavation at Kalambo Falls, a 235m high, single-drop waterfall at the southeast end of Lake Tanganyika, on what is now the border between Zambia and Tanzania. The site would eventually emerge as one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century, providing a record of more than two hundred and fifty thousand years of human history. To date, artifacts of Acheulean, Sangoan, Lupemban, Magosian, Wilton, and Bantu cultures have all been found at the falls. Clark also undertook significant fieldwork in Ethiopia, Somalia, Malawi, Angola, and Niger, some of which led him to collaborate with Louis and Mary Leakey.
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