Andrew Hill

1946 - 2015

Andrew Hill, 69, succumbed to cancer the morning of Saturday, September 12, 2015. He had lived in Glastonbury since 1994, and since 1985 was a member of the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at Yale University, where he was promoted to full Professor in 1992. He served as the chair of the Anthropology Department from 2000 to 2006, as Curator of Anthropology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History since 1992, and as head of the Peabody Anthropology Division since 2005. In 2006 he was appointed Clayton Stephenson Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology. He also served on the Yale Council for Archeology and the Yale Council on African Studies for many years. Prior to coming to Yale, He was postdoctoral fellow at Harvard from 1981 to 1985. Andrew was born at Huthwaite, Notts, UK, on June 6, 1946, and was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Mansfield, Notts, where his father was an instructor of Biology. He received his BSc from Reading University, UK, in 1967, and his PhD from Bedford College, University of London, in 1975. Andrew was a renowned vertebrate paleontologist who performed the bulk of his research in Kenya, where he resided 1975-1981. His primary research interest was human evolution and its environmental context. He was appointed Director of The International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute for African Prehistory 1980-1981 and as Research Fellow and Research Officer of the Kenya National Museum for the balance of his years in residence in Kenya. Andrew was a member of numerous professional associations, and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009. From 2007 to 2010 he served as appointed member of the US National Academies Committee on the Earth System Context for Hominin Evolution. In 2010 he was appointed to membership of the University of California at San Diego's & the Salk Institutes's Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA). In 2012 he was appointed to the ranks of the Notable Alumni of Royal Holloway and New Bedford College, University of London. Since 1968 Andrew had carried out field work not only in eastern Africa (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya), but also in Pakistan, and in the United Arab Emirates. For many years he directed the Baringo Paleontological Research Project (BPRP), a multidisciplinary research program operating in the Tugen Hills in the Rift Valley of Kenya. Most recently, Andrew was excited to be a collaborator on a project directed by Andrew Cohen of the University of Arizona, "The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project:," which uses drill cores from ancient lake deposits in Kenya and Ethiopia to clarify the environmental context for human evolution over the last 5 million years or so. Andrew was the author or co-author of more than 200 academic papers , abstracts, and book chapters. He co-edited with Kay Behrensmeyer the 1980 Chicago University Press book Fossils in the Making, which founded the discipline of taphonomy, the study of the natural processes whereby living animals are converted over time into fossils. The book is still in print and widely cited. More recently, he co-edited with Peter Whybrow the 1999 Yale University Press definitive work on Arabian paleontology, Fossil Vetebrates of Arabia. Among his professional colleagues, he was perhaps best known for his discovery, while working with Mary Leakey in 1976 at the site of Laetoli, Tanzania, of the geologia layer in which were found the famous fossil footprints of' Australopithecus afarensis that date to about 3.6 million years ago. Since moving to Glastonbury in 1994, Andrew developed a keen interest in American 18th century history and architecture, and became something of an expert on American 18th century furniture and decorative arts. He was an active member of the Historical Society of Glastonbury and Historic Deerfield. He was a skilled and avid cook, a witty and generous host, as well as a proficient keyboard player specializing in the works of those composers born in the year 1685, primarily Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti. He is survived by his wife and loving companion of 35 years, Sally McBrearty, of Glastonbury, his brother, Stewart Hill, of Twickenham, UK, by his mother, May Hill, of Mansfield, Notts, UK, by his cousin. Margaret Oakley, and his uncle, Colin Oakley, of Huthwaite, Notts, UK. He is mourned by friends, students, and colleagues throughout the world. A private burial service was held on September 18; a formal memorial is planned at Yale in several months' time. Memorial contributions may be made to Environment Connecticut, an organization of the Yale University School of Forestry devoted to the preservation of Connecticut's woodlands, coastlands, and other wild and threatened resources: 195 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511.