Nancy Katharine Sandars FSA FBA (29 June 1914 – 20 November 2015) was a British archaeologist and prehistorian.

[5] From 1930 to 1937, Sandars travelled extensively throughout western Europe: she visited Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Spain.

[8] In 1939, Nancy joined Kenyon to work at her excavation of an Iron Age hill fort at The Wrekin, Shropshire.

[1][8] She had also been planning to join an excavation in Normandy run by Mortimer Wheeler, but was stopped by the outbreak of World War II.

[1] I remember I stood at the top of the stairs and threw pots and sherds to Kath standing at the bottom to put them in packing cases.

[1] Another time, torrential rain made her engine short-circuited, shocking her, causing the bike to skid, and leaving her pinned under the wreckage; she was rescued by a passing fireman.

[1] Her role as a wireless operator was to listen to intercepted radio transmissions from German E-Boats and aircraft within 30 miles of the British coastline.

[10] Sandars ended the war in the rank of petty officer, and was later added to the Bletchley Park Roll of Honour.

[13] From 1946 to 1948, Sandars, Richard J. C. Atkinson and Peggy Piggott, were involved in rescue excavations in Dorchester, revealing a number of previously unknown Neolithic monuments.

The excavation was praised for using the "most modern methods" and for publishing "a document of permanent value which reflects great credit on the authors, each of whom played a leading part in the actual field investigations".

In 1958, she once more toured Greece and also Turkey as part of research into the Aegean Bronze Age; she was accompanied by the anthropologist John Campbell and classical archaeologist Dorothea Gray.

[1][15] She had received a grant from St Hugh's College, Oxford (her alma mater) to research the European Neolithic.

[15] As these countries were behind the Iron Curtain which few Western Europeans had been able to cross, she was required to report to the Foreign Office when she returned to England.

[10] Sandars continued her travels and research tours across Europe and the Middle East, visiting sites and museums.