Winifred Lamb: Aegean Prehistorian and Museum Curator

Cover image: British School at Athens

My biography of Winifred Lamb is due to be published in September 2018. The study covers her time as a student at the British School at Athens (as well as her preliminary visit to the Mycenae excavations before she was admitted), and her excavations at Mycenae, Sparta, in Macedonia, on Lesbos and on Chios. Her active fieldwork in the Aegean continued into the 1930s when she shifted her interests to Anatolia (through the excavation at Kusura).

Lamb was simultaneously the honorary keeper of Greek Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where she created a prehistoric gallery displaying finds from British excavations on Crete and on Melos.

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Excavating under Gunfire

I will be contributing "Excavating under Gunfire: Archaeologists in the Aegean during the First World War" to the day workshop "Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Protection in Wartime: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives" in Swansea. It develops Chapter 13 of Sifting the Soil of Greece, "Students at War".

One of the topics will be the work of British and French archaeologists to record the archaeological remains and to preserve the finds during the campaign in Macedonia. French archaeologists formed part of the Service Archéologique de l'Armée d'Orient. They had gained expertise working on the site of Elaious at Gallipoli, a site that attracted gunfire from the Turkish forces.

The British work in Macedonia was initially led by Lt-Commander Ernest Gardner RNVR, a former director of the BSA and also Yates Professor Archaeology in the University of London. Gardner was one of several former BSA students operating with Naval Intelligence in Salonica (EMSIB).

For further details about Sifting the Soil of Greece see here.

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We Will Remember Them

It is the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Seven former students of the BSA were killed: two at Gallipoli and five on the Western Front.

Stanley Casson served on the Western Front in the East Lancashire Regiment; he was wounded in May 1915. In 1916 he joined the General Staff in Salonica and served on the Allied Control Commission in Thessaly (1917). At the end of the war he served in Constantinople and Turkestan until he was demobilised in 1919. He was Assistant Director of the BSA under Alan Wace (1920-22), and Reader in Classical Archaeology at Oxford. He re-enlisted in the Intelligence Corps at the outbreak of the Second World War and served in Holland and Greece rising to the rank of Lt.-Colonel. He was killed on active service in a flying accident on 17 April 1944 and was buried in Newquay.

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Macedonian Exploration Fund

The Macedonian Exploration Fund was announced in March 1911:

Preliminary journeys in Macedonia have shown that local conditions are exceptionally favourable to more systematic work; and it has been decided to form a committee of Oxford and Cambridge scholars to conduct research in the history, archaeology, and anthropology of these Balkan lands.

The initial support had come, in part, from Liverpool where Myres had held a chair (until 1910 when he moved back to Oxford). As money did not seem to be forthcoming a further announcement was made. The Times (July 31, 1911) reported:

Macedonia, as well as Thrace, has hitherto has been a terra incognita, though afford a most promising field for research in prehistoric, classical, Byzantine, and medieval archaeology.

Alan J.B. Wace and Maurice S. Thompson had just completed their research in Thessaly and were engaged for the work in Macedonia.

The outbreak of the First Balkan War in October 1912 (and the capture of Salonica in November) disrupted further work. As war broke out throughout Europe Wace explored the possibility of excavating at Olynthos (though this was in fact conducted by the American D.M. Robinson after the First World War). The trench warfare in Macedonia brought to light numerous archaeologial sites and the British School conducted further excavations during the 1920s.

The Committee

• Dr Arthur John Evans (1851-1941) (chairman)
• David George Hogarth (1862-1927)
• Sir William Ramsay (1851-1939)
• ProfessorJohn Bagnell Bury (1861-1927)
• Walter Leaf (1852-1927)
• Professor William Ridgeway (1858-1926)
• George Leonard Cheesman (1884-1915)
• Maurice S. Thompson
• Alan John Bayard Wace (1879-1957)
• Professor John Linton Myres (1869-1954) (secretary)
• Vincent W. Yorke (treasurer)
  

Donors to the Macedonian Exploration Fund

• Dr Arthur John Evans: £25
• Robert Carr Bosanquet: £2.2.0
• Professor John Linton Myres: £5
• Professor William Ridgeway: £2.2.0
• Leonard Whibley: £2.2.0
• Alan John Bayard Wace: £5
• Cambridge Classical Society: £5.5.0
• David George Hogarth: £2.2.0
• ProfessorJohn Bagnell Bury: £2.2.0
• Maurice S. Thompson: £5

References
Casson, S., and E. A. Gardner. 1918/19. "Macedonia. II. Antiquities found in the British Zone, 1915-1919." Annual of the British School at Athens 23: 10-43, pls. i-xiii.
Heurtley, W. A. 1939. Prehistoric Macedonia: an archaeological reconnaissance of Greek Macedonia (west of the Struma) in the Neolithic, Bronze, and early Iron ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wace, A. J. B. 1914/16. "The site of Olynthus." Annual of the British School at Athens 21: 11-15.
Wace, A. J. B., and M. S. Thompson. 1911. "The Distribution of Early Civilization in Northern Greece." Geographical Journal 37: 631-36.
Wace, A. J. B., and A. M. Woodward. 1911/12. "Inscriptions from Upper Macedonia." Annual of the British School at Athens 18: 166-88.
Woodward, A. M. 1911/12. "Inscriptions from Beroea in Macedonia." Annual of the British School at Athens 18: 133-65.

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Epigraphy and Cambridge students

Ernest Stewart Roberts (1847-1912) was one of the significant influences on Cambridge students for the study of epigraphy. He was college lecturer in classics at Gonville & Caius (and later Master). One of his students was Ernest Gardner (1862-1939), the first student at and second director of the BSA. They later collaborated on Roberts' two volume Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887-1905).

Gardner had published the Greek inscriptions from Petrie's excavations at Naukratis as well as studies of Cockerell's notes on Greek inscriptions. Henry J.W. Tillyard (1881-1968) was also a student at Caius. He was admitted to the BSA as assistant librarian (1904/05) and took part in the work in Laconia publishing the inscriptions from Geraki and Sparta (1906, 1907).

Few other Cambridge students published inscriptions. William Loring (1865-1915) published a fragment from the Edict of Diocletian from Megalopolis, and some new inscriptions from the site of ancient Tegea. Vincent Yorke (1869-1957) took part in the surveys of eastern Anatolia and published some of the finds. Caroline Amy Hutton (c. 1861-1931) published some funerary texts from Suvla Bay, and the Greek inscriptions from Petworth House.

Alan Wace (and Maurice Thompson) published a Latin inscription of the reign of Trajan that they had noted in Macedonia. However they seemed to have passed their notes on inscriptions to Oxford-trained Marcus N. Tod and Arthur M. Woodward.

Select bibliography
Gardner, E. A. 1885a. "Inscriptions copied by Cockerell in Greece, I." Journal of Hellenic Studies 6: 143-52.
—. 1885b. "Inscriptions copied by Cockerell in Greece, II." Journal of Hellenic Studies 6: 340-63.
—. 1885c. "Inscriptions from Cos, &c." Journal of Hellenic Studies 6: 248-60.
—. 1886. "An inscription from Chalcedon." Journal of Hellenic Studies 7: 154-56.
—. 1887. "An inscription from Boeae." Journal of Hellenic Studies 8: 214-15.
—. 1893. "The Archermus inscription." Classical Review 7: 140-41.
Hutton, C. A. 1914/16a. "The Greek inscriptions at Petworth House." Annual of the British School at Athens 21: 155-65.
—. 1914/16b. "Two sepulchral inscriptions from Suvla Bay." Annual of the British School at Athens 21: 166-68.
Loring, W. 1890. "A new portion of the edict of Diocletian from Megalopolis." Journal of Hellenic Studies 11: 299-342.
—. 1895. "Four fragmentary inscriptions." Journal of Hellenic Studies 15: 90-92.
Tillyard, H. J. W. 1904/05a. "Boundary and mortgage stones from Attica." Annual of the British School at Athens 11: 63-71.
—. 1904/05b. "Laconia II. Geraki. 3. Inscriptions." Annual of the British School at Athens 11: 105-12.
—. 1905/06a. "Laconia II. Excavations at Sparta, 1906. § 9. Inscriptions from the Artemisium." Annual of the British School at Athens 12: 351-93.
—. 1905/06b. "Laconia II. Excavations at Sparta, 1906. § 14. Inscriptions from the altar, the acropolis, and other sites." Annual of the British School at Athens 12: 441-79.
Tod, M. N. 1922. "Greek inscriptions from Macedonia." Journal of Hellenic Studies 42: 167-83.
Tod, M. N., H. J. W. Tillyard, and A. M. Woodward. 1906/07. "Laconia I. Excavations at Sparta, 1907. § 10. The inscriptions." Annual of the British School at Athens 13: 174-218.
Wace, A. J. B., and M. S. Thompson. 1910/11. "A Latin inscription from Perrhaebia." Annual of the British School at Athens 17: 193-204.
Wace, A. J. B., and A. M. Woodward. 1911/12. "Inscriptions from Upper Macedonia." Annual of the British School at Athens 18: 166-88.
Woodward, A. M. 1913. "Inscriptions from Thessaly and Macedonia." Journal of Hellenic Studies 33: 313-46.
Yorke, V. W. 1898. "Inscriptions from eastern Asia Minor." Journal of Hellenic Studies 18: 306-27.

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