Edgerton Alvord Throckmorton (July 30, 1928 – June 5, 1990), known as Peter Throckmorton, was an American photojournalist and a pioneer underwater archaeologist. He is best remembered for fusing academia, archaeometry, and diving in 1960 to create responsible underwater archaeology: the excavation of the Cape Gelidonya bronze age wreck site. The team he assembled worked under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The project would launch the career of marine archaeologist George Bass. Throckmorton was a founding member of the Sea Research Society and served on its Board of Advisors until his death in 1990. He was also a trustee for NUMA and was an instructor at Nova Southeastern University.

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Personal life

He was born in 1928 in New York City to parents Edgerton Alvord Throckmorton and Lucy Norton Leonard who divorced in the 1930s. He had attended Fountain Valley School of Colorado, Class of 1946, and registered for military service in Colorado on June 3, 1946. He was fluent in French, Greek, and Turkish. George Bass wrote of him: "Born in New York, he eventually rebelled against his privileged background, running away from boarding school in Colorado to seek adventure. He worked on various vessels in the Pacific, finally reaching Hawaii, where he learned to dive. After four years in the army, in Japan and Korea, he enrolled in the University of Hawaii and worked on a terrestrial archaeological excavation. Although he never graduated from college, he also studied at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris."

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