John Robert Mortimer (15 June 1825 – 19 August 1911) was an English corn-merchant and archaeologist who lived in Driffield, East Riding of Yorkshire.

John Robert Mortimer was born at Fimber in the Yorkshire Wolds on 15 June 1825, the eldest of three children of a local farmer; he received a village school education at Fridaythorpe.

In adult life he operated as a corn merchant, moving to the nearby larger town of Driffield in 1869; in the same year marrying Matilda née Mitchell, daughter of the vicar of Sancton and of Holme on the Wolds.

[13][14][note 2] Many of his excavations took place between 1863 and 1879, and were self-financed from his own business;[13] in 1878 Mortimer opened a purpose built museum in Driffield.

[16] After the 1870s, an agricultural depression caused the price of grain to decrease (see Repeal of the 1846 Corn Laws), he became bankrupt in 1887 owing £1,800; the expenditure on the museum, and on excavation both contributing significantly.

[25][26][4] Mortimer credits Agnes in the preface to his volume: "For the sketches of the specimens figured in this book, and for numerous illustrations used elsewhere, I am solely indebted to my daughter Agnes, who from the time she was thirteen years of age until she was nineteen, devoted many of her leisure hours to the completion of this, which at her age, must have been a tedious and irksome task.”[27] Mortimer applied the scientific method to his work in an attempt to infer the past, rather than being a pure collector of curiosities.

[28] Though initially driven by curiosity he was also motivated a desire to gain and preserve knowledge of ancient inhabitants of the land; he was concerned that much evidence was being increasingly rapidly destroyed by changes in farming methods, such as intensive ploughing.