ichael Hamilton Jameson, a scholar of Greek antiquity who in the 1960's helped unearth the relics of battles fought more than two millenniums ago, died on Aug. 28 in Stanford, Calif. He was 79 and lived in Palo Alto, Calif.

His family said his death followed a brief illness.

Previously associated with the University of Pennsylvania, he retired in 1990 as Crossett professor emeritus of humanistic studies at Stanford University.

Mr. Jameson led explorations that shed new light on the Peloponnesian War, in which Sparta defeated Athens in 404 B.C. His field work also discovered significant evidence from the Persian Wars (500-449 B.C.) described by Herodotus. Mr. Jameson's most notable finds included remnants of the town of Halieis, a strategic harbor on the Argolid, the easternmost peninsula of the Peloponnesus.

Mr. Jameson wrote books about the tragedies of Sophocles and agriculture and slavery in classical Athens. He was co-author of "A Greek Countryside: The Southern Argolid From Prehistory to Present Day."

Michael Jameson was born in London. He graduated in 1942 from the University of Chicago, where he also got his Ph.D. in 1949. He started teaching at the University of Missouri before his nearly two decades at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1976.

Mr. Jameson is survived by his wife of 58 years, Virginia Broyles Jameson; and four sons: Nicholas, of Los Angeles; Anthony, of Saarbrücken, Germany; John, of Tokyo; and David, of London.