Euan MacKie

His research interests included brochs, rotary querns, the Hunterian's early ethnographical collections, the voyages of Captain Cook, the iron Age and prehistory of northern Britain and the evolution and foreign influences of material culture. Further interests included cultural diffusionism, 18th-century architecture of Scotland, archaeological methodology and museum design. He led several major excavations along with studies of stone circles and standing stones of the later neolithic period, in particular their astronomical and calendrical qualities. He also conducted surveys into the level of skill in astronomy and geometry existed in neolithic Britain. His bibliography includes over 120 books, articles and papers.

He braved to speak out on several controversial areas of science, suggesting a method of testing various Catastrophism theories in the New Scientist in 1973. He claimed "It is possible, using radiocarbon dates, to devise a simple quantitative test." In "Science and Society in Prehistoric Britain", he became one of the very few archaeologists to put the unit of the Megalithic Yard to scientific test. He noticed that two squares of a side equal to the Egyptian remen generates a root five diagonal that is very close to the megalithic yard. He also showed the links to the Sumerian šu-du3-a, ancient mining rods used in the Austrian Tyrol and an Indus Valley measuring rod excavated from the Mohenjo-daro site. He was importantly noted for being the first person to suggest the term Archaeoastronomy, however he modestly claimed "...the genesis and modern flowering of archaeoastronomy must surely lie in the work of Alexander Thom in Britain between the 1930s and the 1970s."

On returning to the United Kingdom in 1960 he worked for six months as temporary assistant in the old Department of Ethnography in the British Museum before taking up a curatorial post in the Hunterian Museum of the University of Glasgow in charge of prehistoric collections, later in charge of ethnographical collections as well. His work primarily involved research, fieldwork, excavations and displays. He became deputy director there in 1985 but voluntarily relinquished the post to become a semi-retired senior curator from 1995-1998. Since full retirement he continued to carry out research, to write and to lecture. His research and general interests were varied, and he wrote on the topics in the following section.

He spent six months in Central America as member of the Cambridge Expedition to British Honduras excavating Mayan archaeological sites in British Honduras (now Belize) between 1959 and 1960. At the medium-sized ceremonial centre of Xunantunich the application of the British system of recording every layer exposed, including the surface deposits, produced dramatic evidence for the sudden destruction of the site in the later 9th century, the partial clearance of fallen rubble and then its final abandonment by the elite groups who had lived in it. Thereafter peasants seem to have lived among the ruins. An earthquake was suggested as the most likely agent for this destruction, although this is controversial to many. Subsequent major excavations at the site in the 1990s by UCLA do not seem to have recognized the same phenomena.

Mackie was educated at Whitgift School, Croydon between 1946 and 1954 and later graduated with a degree in Archeology & Anthropology from St. John's College at the University of Cambridge in 1959, and had a PhD from the University of Glasgow where he was an honorary research fellow. He was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1973. Keeper of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1974 and Deputy Director from 1986 - 1995, he took early part-time retirement in 1995 with full retirement in 1998. He was also member of the Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (FSA Scot.), an Honorary Research Fellow of Hunterian until 2005 and an Honorary Research Associate of the National Museums of Scotland from 2007. Mackie was also a member of the Prehistoric Society and Glasgow Archaeological Society, of which he was president in the 1980s.

Euan Wallace MacKie (10 February 1936 - 2 November 2020) was a British archaeologist and anthropologist. He was a prominent figure in the field of Archaeoastronomy.