Dr. Hamilton was born and raised in Pecos, Texas. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Texas Tech University in Lubbock in 1967 and a Doctorate in Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1975. In 1978 Dr. Hamilton brought his formidable commitment to proper conservation of archaeological materials to the Nautical Archaeology Program and Texas A&M University, where he founded the Conservation Research Laboratory (CRL). Dr. Hamilton generously served as Coordinator of NAP, Head of the Department of Anthropology, Director the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation, and President of INA while overseeing the groundbreaking work of the CRL.

While on the NAP faculty, Dr. Hamilton taught underwater archaeology, artifact conservation, and North American historic and prehistoric archaeology. In overseeing the work of the Conservation Research Laboratory, Dr. Hamilton pioneered many techniques used around the world to assure proper care for waterlogged artifacts. So respected were his abilities that his graduate lectures from NAP courses alone earned him an international reputation. His fieldwork in conserving artifacts recovered from shipwrecks of the 1554 Spanish Fleet wrecked off the coast of Padre Island, from the sunken city of Port Royal off the coast of Jamaica, and from the vast trove of materials recovered from La Belle, a ship in the fleet that La Salle brought to the New World to found a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River, proved the immense value of his creative methods.

Dr. Hamilton retired in 2022 but throughout his distinguished career, he tirelessly reminded generations of students and researchers worldwide that excavating a shipwreck is only a small percentage of the task of nautical archaeology.