For much of their lives, Robert and Linda Braidwood lived for months in mud huts and tents in the Middle East, she fascinated by the study of ancient tools and he by the rise of civilizations.
In public and private they were a team, their names appearing together on dozens of scientific publications. The couple, often referred to as LinBob–a combination of their names–trained some of the country’s best-known archeologists.
On Wednesday, Jan.15, after 66 years as a married couple, many of them as a research team at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, both died of pneumonia in University of Chicago Hospitals, said their son-in-law, Ray Tindel. Mr. Braidwood, 95, died at 2:40 a.m. Wednesday, and his wife, 93, died 20 hours later. The couple had been living in LaPorte, Ind.
Their excavations in the Middle East extracted what were then the earliest-known samples of human blood, hand-worked copper implements and textiles. Those finds confirmed theories about humankind’s evolution from nomadic hunter-gatherers to members of communities.
“Bob was one of the first people to call attention to this transition and was one of the first people to come up with an actual explicit theory of where and how it took place,” said Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute.
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Mr. Braidwood had earned his place as “an iconic name” of his era, said Ian Tattersall, curator of the American Museum of Natural History’s division of anthropology. Meanwhile, Mrs. Braidwood was prevented by nepotism rules of that time from pursuing a doctorate at the U. of C., university officials said.
But she was always by her husband’s side.
“The role she played was very much as his colleague,” said Mary Voigt, chancellor professor of anthropology at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
“As I looked at most of what he wrote, I could see the hand of Linda as well as Bob,” said Robert McCormick Adams, a former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a graduate student of Mr. Braidwood’s in the early 1950s.
“Being in the field with them was like having a second set of parents,” said Kent Flannery, curator of zooarcheology at the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan and another former student. “They always made sure we were OK.”
They grew up in Michigan, he in Detroit and she in Grand Rapids. Both attended the University of Michigan, where they met. In 1929 a professor there encouraged Mr. Braidwood to abandon his studies in architectural engineering for a degree in archeology. In 1933, the Oriental Institute hired Mr. Braidwood, who obtained his PhD in archeology from the U. of C. a decade later.
The couple reunited in 1936 on a ship returning from Europe. “He saw her name on the passenger list and remembered dating her sorority sisters several years before,” said their daughter, Gretel. “He sought her out on the ship.”
Mrs. Braidwood worked as a buyer of women’s fashions before the couple married in January 1937. She began traveling with him on expeditions to Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, trips that led to her career analyzing how ancient people used flint tools. She went on to complete a master’s degree in archeology from the U. of C. in 1946.
She was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Turkey in 1963-64 and a member of the editorial advisory board for the journal Archaeology from 1952 to 1967. Her numerous publications included the book “Digging Beyond the Tigris,” her account of working in the Kurdish hills of Iraq.
During World War II, Mr. Braidwood directed a meteorological mapping program at the U. of C. for the Army Air Forces. The war, which limited travel and field research, allowed the Braidwoods time to study gaps in Iraq’s archeological history from 12,000 years ago.
While many of Mr. Braidwood’s colleagues searched for the treasures of palaces and royal tombs, he reveled in finding kernels of domestic wheat that signaled the beginning of farming and the jawbones of dogs that established the domestication of animals.
Mr. Braidwood avoided the limelight and balked at the suggestion that his lifestyle resembled that of the movie character Indiana Jones, Tindel said.
“Linda was petite and very animated, a little like Katharine Hepburn,” Flannery said.
A Turkish dig in 1989 was their last. The couple continued to conduct research and teach at the Oriental Institute until recent years, Tindel said.
In addition to their daughter, survivors also include a son, Douglas, and three grandchildren.
Funeral services will be private. A memorial service is being planned.