Dominique Petronella Margaret Collon, (born 18 May 1940) is a Belgian-born academic, author, archaeologist and former curator at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in London who has worked and travelled extensively in the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

in Syria, Turkey and Iraq. She is an authority on

cylinder seals A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...

. Collon was born in

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

in 1940, the daughter of Petronella and Alexandre Collon. In 1962 she was a student at the Institute of Archaeology in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

where she was studying for the Postgraduate Diploma in Western Asiatic Archaeology. As an archaeologist Collon excavated in Turkey under her uncle who was the Director of the

British Institute at Ankara The British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), formerly British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, is a research institute that supports, promotes, and publishes research into the humanities and social sciences of Turkey and the Black Sea region. The ...

; in

Kültepe Kültepe ( Turkish: ''ash-hill''), also known as Kanesh or Nesha, is an archaeological site in Kayseri Province, Turkey, inhabited from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, in the Early Bronze Age.Kloekhorst, Alwin, (2019)Kanišite Hittite: ...

with

Tahsin Özgüç Tahsin Özgüç (1916–2005) was an eminent Turkish field archaeologist. The careers of Tahsin Özgüç and his wife, Nimet Özgüç, began after World War II and lasted for nearly 60 years. He was said to be the doyen of Anatolian archaeology. ...

in 1964; and with

Seton Lloyd Seton Howard Frederick Lloyd, CBE (30 May 1902, Birmingham, England – 7 January 1996, Faringdon, England), was an English archaeologist. He was President of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Director of the British Institute of Archaeol ...

and Charles A. Burney at in 1965.Open letter to Dominique Collon from David Hawkins - The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (2015) - Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
/ref> She took her PhD at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1971 with her thesis on ''The Seal Impressions of Tell Atchana/Alalakh'' and which was published in 1975.Biography of Dominique Collon - encyclopedia.com
/ref> From 1973 to 1976, Collon was in

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

where she excavated the

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

s of Utica and other sites and prepared the reports for publication. On her return to the United Kingdom she specialised in the study of the

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

displayed on ancient

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

n and

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

cylinder seal A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...

s. Dr Collon was with the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities (later Ancient Near East and later still Middle East) at the

from 1964 to 1968, and again from 1977 to 1988; she gained a full-time position at the Museum as curator of Western Asiatic Antiquities from 1988 until her retirement in 2005;Biography of Dominique Collon
-

website her retirement was marked by a symposium held at

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

in June 2005. From 1979 to 2010 she was the co-editor of ''Iraq'', the journal of the

British Institute for the Study of Iraq The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI) (formerly the British School of Archaeology in Iraq) is the only body in Britain devoted to research into the ancient civilizations and languages of Mesopotamia. It was founded in 1932 and its aim ...

, while from 1985 to 1989 she edited the Ancient Near East section of the ''

Grove Dictionary of Art ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

''. Collon is a Fellow of the

Society of Antiquaries of London A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societ ...

and a corresponding member of the

Deutsches Archäologisches Institut The German Archaeological Institute (german: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office of Germany ...

Publications

*(With others) ''Sondages au flanc sud du Tell de Qala'at el-Mudiq: néolithique, chalcolithique, bronze ancien'', Centre belge de recherches archéologiques à Apamée de Syrie (Brussels, Belgium), 1975. *''The Seal Impressions from Tell Atchana/Alalakh'', Butzon & Bercker (Kevelaer, Germany), 1975. *''Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinders Seals II, Akkadian-Post Akkadian-Ur III Periods'', British Museum Publications (London, England), 1982. *''The Alalakh Cylinder Seals'', British Archeological Reports (London, England), 1982. *''Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals III, Isin/Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods'', British Museum Publications (London, England), 1986. *''First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East'', British Museum Press (London, England), 1987, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1988, revised edition, British Museum Press (London, England), 2005. *''Near Eastern Seals'', University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1990. *''Ancient Near Eastern Art'', University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1995. *(Editor and contributor) ''7,000 Years of Seals'', British Museum Press (London, England), 1997. *''Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals IV, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Periods'', British Museum Press (London, England), 2001. Dollon has also contributed to books by others, including ''Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum'', Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1995; to reference books; and shorter publications. She was the co-editor of the academic journal ''Iraq'' (1979—2010).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collon, Dominique 1940 births Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni People associated with the British Museum Employees of the British Museum Belgian archaeologists Belgian curators British women archaeologists British archaeologists Archaeologists of the Near East Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Living people Belgian emigrants to the United Kingdom Belgian women curators