Archaeological prospection is celebrating one of its very first pioneers: Irwin Scollar turns 90 in November 2018. Since the early 1960s, the US-born engineer and archaeologist has considerably influenced archaeological geophysics and aerial archaeology and his vast knowledge and ground-braking innovations have been an inspiration to a worldwide community in this discipline.
In October 2011 it was the LBI ArchPro’s honour to jointly organize the “Pioneering Archaeological Prospection” conference with Irwin Scollar in Austria. Some of the very first pioneers in the field, such as Martin Aitken, Mike Tite, Albert Hesse, John C. Belshé, Yasushi Nishimura, Otto Braasch and Helmut Becker, presented a retrospect on the early beginnings of archaeological prospection.
To mark the birthday of this highly respected luminary we have compiled recordings from the conference session as well as from a personal interview with Irwin Scollar in 2013: https://youtu.be/fTQjtttmDf0
The following article was written by LBI ArchPro historian Roland Filzwieser and is based on a series of face-to-face interviews he did with Irwin Scollar in 2011: https://archpro.lbg.ac.at/archpro-pioneer-irwin-scollar-turns-90