Bridget Allchin obituary

Prehistorian and expert in South Asian archaeology who blazed a trail for women in the field and whose publications stretched from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka

The prehistorian Bridget Allchin, who has died aged 90, was one of the first women to establish herself as a field expert in the male-dominated discipline of South Asian archaeology. She played a leading role in launching the intensive field-walking surveys and excavations that discovered the oldest known stone artefacts in South Asia.

In the 1950s, a time when few women excavated in India, Bridget initially assisted her husband, the archaeologist Raymond Allchin, before raising funds and organising her own projects focused on later prehistory. She was an advocate of interdisciplinarity, and this included a survey of the Thar desert which investigated claims that this arid landform, straddling the border between India and Pakistan and larger in size than the British Isles, had been formed as a result of cultivation. It also reviewed its history of human occupation.