Duncan Mackenzie (17 May 1861 – 1934) was a Scottish archaeologist, whose work focused on one of the more spectacular 20th century archaeological finds, Crete's palace of Knossos, the proven centre of Minoan civilisation. Early biography Duncan MacKenzie was born on 17 May 1861 in the small, Gaelic-speaking village of Aultgowrie, in the highlands of eastern Scotland, 15 miles from the coastal town of Inverness, in Ross and Cromarty. Queen Victoria had been on the throne of the United Kingdom since 1837. As is indicated by his last name, Duncan's father, Alexander, was an offshoot of the Mackenzie clan, whose territory stretched in a band westward across Scotland. In the clan system, the chiefs, guardians of the clan, were generally well-to-do, holding clan lands in trust, but later appropriating them as private property. They resided in castles on estates. The rest of the clan members were not so, but tended to be poor families dependent in some way on the chiefs. Alexander held the position of gamekeeper of the Fairburn Estate, on which Aultgowrie was located. It was at the confluence of highland streams. The owners were the MacKenzies of Seaforth, a branch of the clan. They had a mill, and raised sheep. Duncan was the fourth of nine children of Alexander and his wife, Margaret Kennedy MacKenzie. He was named after his grandfather, Duncan. His mother was the eldest daughter of Murdoch Kennedy, a schoolteacher. The family spoke Gaelic at home. When they went to school they were required to learn English. Duncan was thus raised in a large-family, bilingual environment. He studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh; and received his PhD from Vienna in classical archaeology. Professional career Appointed field supervisor of the excavation of Phylakopi by the British School at Athens, he worked closely with a team of professional archaeologists including Arthur Evans and David George Hogarth. They were investigating the provenance of Mycenaean pottery as defined by Heinrich Schliemann. After a few years they realised that Phylakopi was not going to yield that information. The evidence pointed toward Crete. Evans and Hogarth left Phylakopi, while MacKenzie stayed on to wind the excavation down. Within a few years the secession of Crete from the Ottoman Empire opened opportunities to excavate there. Hogarth was the first to discover it. He sent for Evans immediately, as the Phylakopi crew had been a very close-knit team. Purchasing the land