Astley John Hilary Goodwin, archaeologist, was the son of Reverend William Allerton Goodwin and his wife Alice Mary Key. He was educated at St. Johns College, Johannesburg, from 1912 to 1918 and continued his studies at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge (1919-1922) where he graduated in anthropology and archaeology. Upon his return to South Africa he was appointed in February 1923 as assistant to the social anthropologist Professor Radcliffe-Brown in the School of African Life and Languages at the University of Cape Town. In due course he was promoted to senior lecturer in social anthropology (1926), later became senior lecturer in ethnology and archaeology (1934), and was promoted to associate professor in 1954. In 1929 he introduced a new course in ethnology and archaeology which represented the only university training in archaeology in South Africa for almost thirty years. The next year he undertook a tour of prehistoric sites in France, Spain, Algeria and Tunisia. Early in his career he started to collaborate with Dr E. L. Gill, director of the South African Museum, in arranging the study collection of stone artefacts in the museum's Department of Archaeology and Ethnology and served as honorary curator of the department from 1931 to 1956.
Goodwin also applied his talents to the development of a systematic classification and chronological arrangement of the stone artefact collections in various local museums and private collections. It became clear to him that the terminologies proposed earlier were unsuitable to describe the South African material and he proposed an essentially South African cultural succession and terminology based on stratigraphic, typological and technological evidence. Thus he proposed a division of the stone age into an Early Stone Age, Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age, each comprising different cultures and variations. His ideas were first published in some articles in the Cape Times newspaper and came to be accepted by other leading figures in southern African archaeology such as Prof. C. van Riet Lowe and Dr. Neville Jones. Formal publication of the classifications and terminology followed in the form of articles in the South African Journal of Science, such as "South African stone implement industries" (1926) and "On some problems of association and chronology in prehistory" (1931), in The Stone Age Cultures of South Africa (1929, in collaboration with van Riet Lowe) and in "South African archaeology" (Man, 1927). The successions and terminology that he proposed remained essentially unaltered for decades and have been widely adopted in southern Africa and even East Africa.
Goodwin also stressed the need for scientific methods of field work and the importance of supporting conclusions with independent but converging sources of evidence. His methods were later described in his handbook Method in prehistory (1945) and other publications. The field work he undertook included excavations in Cape St Blaize Cave at Mossel Bay, the Oakhurst shelter near Wilderness, the caves of the Cape Peninsula, and the study of rock engravings at Vosburg in the Karoo. Later he was invited by the government of Nigeria to study some important archaeological deposits in that country, which he did during 1953-1957. His research was published in some 150 papers and books. He also played a significant role in the development of South African archaeology by his role in founding the South African Archaeological Society in 1945, and by his editorship from 1945 to 1958 of the South African Archaeological Bulletin, which is aimed at both professionals and amateurs. The society's Goodwin Series of occasional papers was named in his honour.
Goodwin became a member of the Royal Society of South Africa in 1927, was elected a Fellow of the society in 1930, became a member of council in 1932, served as honorary general secretary from 1934 to 1951, and was elected president for 1959-1960. He and A. L. du Toit* jointly launched the Athenaeum Trust in 1947 to create a centre for the offices and meetings of the cultural and scientific societies of Cate Town and environs.
In 1922 he married Winifred Laura Micklethwaite, with whom he had three children.
