Professor of anthropology whose approach to archaeology centred on crafts executed by women 40,000 years ago

Olga Soffer, who has died aged 83, brought a revolutionary idea into the conversation about prehistoric ice age people: women mattered. Inspired when working on archaeological excavations in the former USSR, and by remains from a dig in Moravia, in the 1990s she presented a case for women as makers of textiles, baskets and nets, critical to survival in bleak northern conditions 30,000 years ago.

Her achievement was the more remarkable for her career path. By then a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, she had obtained her three degrees over three decades, partly while also working as a cosmetics buyer and fashion promoter for a New York department store.

Dealer in antiquities who discovered large-scale thefts from the collections of the British Museum

With a doctorate in Roman religion and a university chair, Ittai Gradel, who has died of cancer aged 61, might have confined his achievements to a successful scholarly career. However, in 2008, bored with routine bureaucracy, he left his post at Reading University, and returned to his native Denmark to deal in antiquities.

His disillusionment with academia was reinforced when, a few years later, he discovered that large-scale thefts had been taking place from the British Museum’s collections. At first reluctant to believe the accumulating evidence, Gradel contacted the museum in 2021 only when it became impossible to deny – and was told nothing was missing.