John Mulvaney was born in Victoria, Australia on October 26, 1925. During World War II, he served in the Australian Air Force. He received a degree in history at Melbourne University and a degree in prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge University. In 1954, he became a lecturer at Melbourne University. In 1965, he started teaching at the Australian National University in Canberra. He retired from there in 1985.
He was an archaeologist and author. He wrote, co-authored, or edited 16 books including his autobiography, Digging up a Past, which was published in 2011. He died on September 22, 2016 at the age of 90.
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