His father, Raymond D. Jameson, professor of Western literature at the University of Peking, and mother, Rose Perel Jameson, were visting London at the time of his birth.Biographical details for this article are drawn from the biographical memoir by Martin Ostwald (References) He spent his childhood in Beijing and with his mother in London, received his A.B. in Greek at the University of Chicago in 1942, aged seventeen, served in the U.S. Navy as a Japanese translator, 1943-46, then married Virginia Broyles. He received his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1949, with a dissertation on "The Offering at Meals: Its Place in Greek Sacrifice". A Fulbright Fellowship in 1949 supported him at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he hiked the Peloponnesos with his new wife and gained an intimate knowledge of inscriptions. After a brief stint at the University of Minnesota, he accepted a Ford Fellowship at the Institute for Social Anthropology at Oxford University. On his return to the United states, be began his long association with the University of Pennsylvania (1954-76).