John Desmond Clark CBE FSA (10 April 1916 – 14 February 2002) was a British archaeologist noted particularly for his work on prehistoric Africa.

In 1953, Clark ordered an excavation at Kalambo Falls, a 235m high, single-drop waterfall at the southeast end of Lake Tanganyika, on what is now the border between Zambia and Tanzania.

The site would eventually emerge as one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century, providing a record of more than two hundred and fifty thousand years of human history.

Clark also undertook significant fieldwork in Ethiopia, Somalia, Malawi, Angola, and Niger, some of which led him to collaborate with Louis and Mary Leakey.

Clark died of pneumonia in Oakland in 2002, having published more than twenty books and over 300 scholarly papers on paleoanthropology and African prehistory in the course of his career.

[5] His Cambridge ScD was awarded in 1975 and honorary doctorates at Witwatersrand and Cape Town universities in 1985, along with the Gold Medals of the Society of Antiquaries of London (1985) and the Archaeological Institute of America (1989).