A globetrotting archaeologist who drew comparisons with Indiana Jones, and who studied and worked in Oxford, has died aged 94. 

Schuyler Jones, an American adventurer whose exploits drew comparisons with the movie character, shared many similarities with George Lucas's Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. 

Aside from the name and the family business — Indy’s father, Henry Sr, was an archaeologist, just like Schuyler Jones and his son, Peter, are archaeologists — they were both adept at foreign languages and wore brown fedoras.

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Schuyler turned his research in Afghanistan's remote eastern valleys into a doctorate at the University of Oxford and went on to become a curator, and later director, at the university's Pitt Rivers Museum. 

Dr Jones’ stepdaughter, Cassandra Da’Luz Vieira-Manion, posted on her Facebook page that Mr Jones died on May 17.
She said she had been taking care of him for the last six years and “truly thought he might live forever”.

“He was a fascinating man who lived a lot of life around the world,” she wrote.

Dr Jones grew up around Wichita, Kansas, and initially worked as a photographer in Paris and across Africa.

In his 1956 book Under The African Sun, he tells of surviving a helicopter crash in a marketplace in In Salah, Algeria, the Wichita Eagle reported.

After the helicopter crashed he discovered he was on fire; gale-force winds had reignited the ashes in his pipe.

He later moved to Greece, where he supported himself by translating books from German and French to English. He decided to drive through India and Nepal in 1958.

He said he fell in love with Afghanistan during the trip and later enrolled at Edinburgh to study anthropology.

“He was more interested in the people and cultures he was finding than he was in photography and selling those,” his son, archaeologist Peter Jones, told the Wichita Eagle.

Upon retirement, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Eric Cale, executive director of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, told the newspaper that Mr Jones permanently donated his grandfather’s artefacts to the museum.

Dr Jones wrote in his 2007 book A Stranger Abroad that he wanted to find the Ark of Covenant and donate it to a museum, which is exactly what Indy accomplished in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. 

The real-life adventurer also said he first heard of Indy in the 1980s when a museum director in Madras asked him if he was the real-life version.

He wrote that he had no idea what she was talking about, but later thought the comparison was driving more students to attend his lectures at Oxford.

Dr Jones was married twice, first to Lis Margot Sondergaard Rasmussen, and then to Ms Da’Luz Vieria-Manion’s mother, Lorraine, who died in 2011. He later began a relationship with actress Karla Burns, who died in 2021, the Wichita Eagle reported.

He is survived by his son, three daughters, a sister, six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, the newspaper reported.