Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) was an Egyptologist who excavated sites in Britain, Egypt, and Palestine and was Professor of Egyptology at University College, London. A meticulous excavator, Petrie was particularly innovative in the interpretation of deeply stratified deposits, undertaking the seriation of undecorated pottery and demonstrating how ceramics from Egypt could be used to establish the age of archaeological strata outside Egypt, a technique known as cross-dating.