Prof Jan Bouzek Passed Away
Prof Bouzek, a classical archaeologist whose interests overreached to philosophy and anthropology, passed away on 3 September 2020 aged 85.
The main specialization of Prof Bouzek was early Greek, Etruscan, and Thracian archaeology. He dedicated many studies to prehistoric Central European and Roman-provincial archaeology, and Antic tradition in Czech art.
He graduated in prehistoric and classical archaeology at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University where became an assistant in 1958, assistant professor in 1962, he received CSc. Title in 1966 and PhDr in 1967. In 1967-1968, he was a grantee of Humboldt Foundation at the University of Tübingen. In winter 1968-1969, he defended his first habilitation thesis but the habilitation process was cancelled. In 1980, he defended his second thesis and was nominated docent in 1983, professor in 1991, and he received the title DrSc in 1992.
From 1969 to 1991, he was the director of the Department of Classical Archaeology at the National Museum in Prague. From December 1989 to January 1991, he was the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts, CU, and the director in 1993-2001 and until 2012 the deputy at the Institute of Classical Archaeology of which he was de facto in charge of (although he could not have been officially authorized) from 1969 along with the Gallery of Classical Art in Hostinné and the Museum of Antic Sculpture and Architecture in Litomyšl. He was also lecturing at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University.
With Drahomír Koutecký, they organized several projects of research in north-western Bohemia and Moravia. Abroad, he finished projects in Turkish Kyme, Greek Samothrace, he led excavations that were parts of UNESCO projects in Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka), and Beirut (Libanon); he thoroughly explored Greek town Pistiros in Bulgaria.
He lectured at the Archaeological Institute James Eliot Norton Memorial in the USA and was a visiting professor at universities in Minnesota, Tübingen, Vienna, Salzburg, Montpellier, and École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He also lectured at Masaryk University in Brno, Comenius University in Bratislava, and the University of Opole in Poland.
