Richard MacGilivray Dawkins (1871-1955) was a British archaeologist and a linguist. He studied comparative literature at Cambridge and served as Director of the British School of Athens (1906-1914). He conducted important excavations in various locations (in Crete, Melos and Sparta - Greece) and became professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language at Oxford (1920-1939). He lived in Greece for 16 years and travelled throughout the then Greek state as well as across the Aegean, in Asia Minor, the Black Sea and Cappadocia, studying and recording the dialects and local cultures and publishing relevant studies.