Philip L. Kohl

1946 - 2022

Philip L. Kohl

Antrim NH - Philip L. Kohl, emeritus professor of anthropology and Bronze Age archaeologist, died May 11, 2022 at the age of 75 at his home in Antrim, New Hampshire. He had lived with Parkinson's disease and its complications for more than a decade.

Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1946, Phil was the son of Vincent Kohl and Josephine Barber, who met as Commonwealth Edison employees. He grew up with his older brother, Vince, in a co-op in South Shore, a neighborhood that abuts Lake Michigan on Chicago's South Side. He attended Catholic schools, played competitive tennis, and graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep in 1964. Chicago was always vivid in his memory and stories of youthful transgression.

First matriculating at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, Phil withdrew after a year. Returning home, he worked at Marshall Fields while attending the University of Chicago at night. Then his final two years of college were spent at Columbia University in New York, through the School of General Studies, working part time at the Goddard Space Institute. He majored in Classics, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1969.

After junior year, Phil set out to visit his parents in Tehran, who following their retirement in the US had taken up an offer from an American engineering firm contracted for dam projects throughout Iran. That summer he joined a Harvard University archaeological team excavating at Tepe Yahya in southeastern Iran and continued through multiple summer seasons. A scholarship took him to graduate school at Harvard, first in Classics and later he switched to Anthropology. He earned his Ph.D. in 1974, writing a thesis on commodity production and long-distance trade in carved chlorite in Southwest Asia during the Bronze Age.

From 1974 to 2016, Phil spent 42 years teaching in the Anthropology Department at Wellesley College. He also taught for several years at The New School in Manhattan, and was a visiting professor in France and Argentina. Among other topics, he offered courses in physical anthropology, on the peoples and cultures of the Middle East and Eurasia, and on nationalism and archaeology, themes that he developed in his writings, public lectures, and collected volumes. For decades and mostly in the summers spanning the 1970s and early 2000s, Phil was a member of archaeological teams that conducted excavations in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. In 2002, he moved to his beloved southwestern New Hampshire where he finished his book, The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia, which was based partly on over 160 articles he published in peer-review journals in different languages.

Phil led a notable academic life, recognizing the collaborative possibilities and challenges sparked by the ostensible end of the Cold War. It was this period of both violent turbulence and hope that inspired his much-needed critique of nationalist distortions of the archaeological record. He was committed to the preservation of fragile pasts oft-erased across Eurasia and beyond. His research highlighted a shared story of cultural evolution which, in his own words, "shows us that there was no ethnic group in the past or in the present that was qualitatively exceptional in its contribution to [the] cumulative record of technological advance and control over nature."

Phil is survived by his loving family, his daughter Mira, his son Owen, and his partner of 50 years Barbara Gard. Phil loved kayaking, reading fiction, spending time with his often poorly trained pets, and watching the Celtics, Patriots, and Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. When televised games were close, he'd often leave the room, insist such consumption was a waste of time, and attempt to deflect attention from his anxiety about outcomes. Phil retained his sense of humor-often a self-deprecating, somewhat obscene riff on "dad jokes"-to the very end.

With family and nearby friends, Phil was buried in the Nelson, New Hampshire village cemetery on May 17, 2022 with a few items, including a pint-sized drinking horn sometimes seen at traditional Georgian feasts. Phil's extended family includes Vincent Kohl, Amy Gottfried, and Ruth Kohl of Thurmont, MD, Thomas Edick of New Orleans, LA, Linda Gard of Auburn, ME, and George, Molly, Fred, and George Gard of York, PA. A planned hybrid memorial will follow in 2023 for colleagues, former students, and other friends more far-flung.