Dr. Maxine R. Kleindienst (1933-)
Brief biography
Oral history interview recorded May 10, 2023
Interviewer: Bernard A. Wood
Maxine R. Kleindienst is a Pleistocene geoarcheologist who worked as a researcher in the Department of Anthropology of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and then in the Department of World Cultures (Egyptology) of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, before moving to the main campus of the University of Toronto in 1978. She later transferred to the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she was a Full Professor until her retirement in 1998.
Kleindienst has a long and impressive record of field work in Africa, beginning in the mid-1950s in Tanzania, and in what is now Zambia. More recently her research has focused on Dakhla Oasis and then the Kharga Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert; the latter site was discovered by Gertrude Caton Thompson.
Kleindienst’s PhD research at the University of Chicago was supervised by F. Clark Howell. She excavated at Isimila, in the southern highlands of Tanzania. It was thought so remote that Louis Leakey insisted Clark Howell buy a gun to protect Kleindienst from the wild animals! She later worked with Desmond Clark at Kalambo Falls in Zambia. Although Clark Howell was best known for his work in the Lower Omo Valley, his initial interest was the archeology of the Middle Pleistocene in Europe, so he was particularly interested in documenting evidence of the Acheulean in Africa. Kleindienst was instrumental in devising a scheme to describe and interpret the Acheulean artefacts. She also worked with Mary Leakey and excavated JK at Olduvai, and later at sites in Egypt’s Nubian Nile Valley and Western Desert.
Kleindienst was a trailblazer in many ways. She was not only one of the first Africanist prehistorians, but she traveled much of the length and breadth of Africa in her Land Rover!
Maxine R. Kleindienst Oral History Videos
Oral History Transcript
The transcript and narrative supplement below are and free to read and download.
Narrative Supplement
This narrative supplement is a version of the transcript that has been edited for clarity by Bernard A. Wood.
Other Resources
Maxine Kleindienst’s papers are collected in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Anthropological Archives.