He practised as a lawyer in Baltimore before serving in a number of diplomatic posts, which included service in London during the First World War and membership of the US delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
He was part of the US archaeological expedition (1910–14) to Sardis in modern-day Turkey and returned there in the 1920s to catalogue and decipher ancient inscriptions uncovered at the site – a project he remained involved with throughout the 1930s.
Born in Paris, France, on 1 February 1867, Buckler was the only son of Eliza née Ridgely (1828–1894), daughter of Thomas and Eliza (Eichelberger) Ridgely of Hampton, Maryland, and her second husband Dr Thomas Hepburn Buckler (1812–1901), who had practised as a physician in his native Baltimore (also in Maryland) until 1866, when he moved to Paris and gained a license to practise there which he renewed until 1890.
[1][2][3] Through his mother's first husband, the younger Buckler was half-brother to Henry White, who was the US Ambassador to Italy from 1905 to 1907 and to France from 1907 to 1909, and a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles.
[8] In 1906, Buckler was appointed secretary to the special US mission to Spain for King Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg's wedding.
[9] The American expedition of 1910 was the first large-scale archaeological investigation of the site and revealed a temple to Artemis and more than a thousand Lydian tombs.
Buckler became a key scholar of the Lydian language[6] and was primarily responsible for deciphering the inscriptions that were uncovered and published in MAMA.