He was born in
Newton, Massachusetts and attended Harvard College, graduating in 1930. After receiving his PhD from Harvard and serving in the 12th Air Force in North Africa and Italy during World War II, he returned to Harvard and became a professor of archaeology there. Eventually he also became curator of Paleolithic Archaeology at Harvard's
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. In 1948 he proposed the existence of a
Movius Line dividing the
Acheulean tool users of Europe, Africa and western Asia from the
chopping tool industries of East Asia. He also studied the
Perigordian and
Aurignacian cultures of Palaeolithic
France, excavating at the rock shelter of Abri Pataud in Les Eyzies (Dordogne) from 1958 to 1973. He married Nancy Champion de Crespigny (1910–2003), daughter of the Australian physician Sir
Trent Champion de Crespigny on 25 September 1936. The American poet Geoffrey Movius (born 1940) was a son. ==See also==