On January 9, 2020 Dr. Linda Donley-Reid passed away from a protracted illness.
She has been a research affiliate of the Archaeological Research Facility since spring 2017. She received her PhD in 1985 from the Archaeology department of the University of Cambridge, investigating historic and modern traditional architecture of Lamu, Kenya. After years of working in Africa, writing a key work on architecture in post-processual archaeology, she moved to San Francisco and shifted to study Clinical Psychology at San Francisco State University, gaining her MS in 1990 when she began her second career in therapy. She published 10 articles on her African work in her career.
During her archaeology research, Linda completed a great deal of museum work, including being a curator in both the National Museum of Western Kenya and the Lamu Museum, Kenya between 1973 and1975. During that time, she also directed the restoration of 4,000 sq. ft. 18th century Swahili Trader's house. In 1984 she worked on a Swahili ethnographic exhibition at the PA Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and also in the Archaeology and Anthropology Museum at Cambridge University and then in 1999 she again worked on a Swahili ethnographic exhibition for the Anthropology Museum/ University of North Carolina in Greensboro.
Between 1973 and 1981 her field work included recorded vernacular architecture in Kenya, Somalia, Egypt, Northwestern India, West Africa, North Yemen, and Portugal. She also directed excavations of Swahili coral trader’s houses on Lamu and Pate Island, Kenya in 1981, and in 1986 she directed excavations of Lamu slave dwellings.
She blended her psychological skills with archaeology and anthropology on several projects, first in 1988 with the Institute of Texas Cultures on Alabaman Coushatta Indian Reservation Research investigating the psychological reasons for alcoholism, adolescent pregnancies, and traditional religious practices. Later between 1996 and 2004 she engaged with the archaeological interpretations at Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic site in Anatolia-Turkey.
She has been a professional therapist in San Francisco since 1992. During that time she also reconstructed a 15th century English Wool Trader's house from Suffolk, England in Napa, California, called Toad Hall. Her memorial will be held at Toad Hall, the date has not been determined.