'Rhys was born in Wales, attended a grammar school in Cardiff and won a scholarship to Cambridge University in 1959 where he studied basic sciences and mathematics, and archaeology and anthropology, participating in excavations and travelling in Europe and southwestern Asia (Meehan 2001). He was appointed as teaching fellow in the Department of Anthropology of the University of Sydney in 1963, graduating with a doctorate from there in 1971, and as research fellow in prehistory at the then Research School of Pacific Studies of the Australian National University in 1968. He held the visiting chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University, was appointed to a personal chair at ANU in 1993, and was a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Society of Antiquarians. Rhys retired in June 2001, when he was presented with a festschrift contributed to by many of his numerous colleagues and friends (Anderson et al 2001). Rhys Jones died in September last year of leukaemia.' (Introduction)