Winifred Lamb | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 3 November 1894 (1894-11-03) Campden Hill, London, England |
| Died | 16 September 1963 (1963-09-17) (aged 68) Easebourne, England |
| Education | Newnham College, Cambridge |
| Employer | Fitzwilliam Museum |
| Known for | Honorary Keeper of Greek Antiquities; archaeologist working in Greece and Turkey |
Winifred Lamb (3 November 1894 – 16 September 1963) was a Britisharchaeologist,art historian, and museum curator who specialised inGreek,Roman, andAnatolian cultures and artefacts. The bulk of her career was spent as the honorary keeper (curator) of Greek antiquities at theUniversity of Cambridge'sFitzwilliam Museum from 1920 to 1958, and the Fitzwilliam Museum states that she was a "generous benefactor ... raising the profile of the collections through groundbreaking research, acquisitions and publications."[1]
She directed archaeological excavations inGreece andTurkey; was a founding member of theBritish Institute of Archaeology at Ankara; and was the author of numerous books on Greek and Roman antiquities, including the 1929 publicationGreek and Roman Bronzes, which was standard reading for studies on the subject.
Lamb was born on 3 November 1894 at Holly Lodge,Campden Hill, London. She was the daughter ofEdmund Lamb, who was aMember of Parliament from 1906 to 1910, and Mabel Lamb (née Winkworth), an alumna ofNewnham College, Cambridge, who was active in the promotion of women's university education andwomen's suffrage.[2][3] Lamb was educated at home by governesses and tutors,[4] and from 1913 to 1917 attended Newnham, studyingClassics with a specialisation inClassical Archaeology, and earning first-class marks (although at this point women could not receive degrees from Cambridge).[5] While a student she participated in archaeological fieldwork at prehistoric sites near Cambridge led byThomas McKenny Hughes; she was also active in politics, attending meetings of theUnion of Democratic Control, aleft-wing group opposed tomilitarism.[6]
After completing her studies in the summer of 1917, Lamb worked in a hospital for soldiers.[7] In January 1918, she joined 'Room 40', thecryptanalysis section of the British Naval Intelligence Department, where she probably worked on the decipherment of coded messages sent to German submarines, leaving after the end of the war, in December 1918.[8][9] It was here that Lamb metJohn Beazley, a renowned archaeologist also working in British Intelligence, who encouraged her in her research.[10] During this time she also attended sales of antiquities, publishing an article in theJournal of Hellenic Studies on a collection of vases she purchased in one sale,[11] as well as carrying out some cataloguing work in theBritish Museum.[12]
The Greek Department has on show
Statues collected long ago
And rather bad. So turn from these
And view our small antiquities:
The cups that held Athenian wine
With dainty pictures, neat and fine;
Lady from Crete in adoration
(But with a tarnished reputation)
Bronzes superbly patinated
And each one accurately dated!
Products of Rhodes and Thessaly
And colonies across the sea.
And when you're tired of Greece and Rome
Buy picture cards, and study them at home.
Lamb began working at the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in theFitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in October 1918, at the invitation ofSydney Cockrell: her initial duties included writing labels for items on display.[14] In 1920, she was appointed as Honorary Keeper (Curator) of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam; in this position, she arranged new displays (including the creation of displays focusing on prehistoric and Cycladic material), sorted and catalogued the collections, and enhanced them by acquiring new materials through purchases and donations, as well as donating numerous items herself (especially bronzes and pottery).[8][15] Key publications from her work at the Fitzwilliam include a book on Greek and Roman bronze statues[16] and two volumes of theCorpus Vasorum Antiquorum (Corpus of Ancient Vases).[17][18] Throughout her time at the Fitzwilliam, Lamb also worked as an archaeologist in Greece and later Turkey. By the time she retired from the role of Honorary Keeper in August 1958, she had become one of the museum's greatest benefactors of Greek and Roman antiquities.[19]
Lamb first visited Greece in May 1920, briefly joining the excavations atMycenae led byAlan Wace.[20][21] She was admitted to theBritish School at Athens as a student for the academic year of 1920–1921, and spent the year visiting archaeological sites inAttica, thePeloponnese, andCrete, attending lectures in the British School and other archaeological schools, and working on the frescoes found at Mycenae.[22] In May 1921 she joined the Mycenae excavation team and was made responsible for the excavation of the palace as well as for the publication of the frescoes.[23][24] In the next excavation season, May–June 1922, Lamb was appointed as second-in-command of the dig, with particular responsibility for excavating the tombs near the settlement (including thetholosTomb of Aegisthus) and co-authored many of the excavation reports with Wace.[25][26]
Lamb next joined the British School's excavation atSparta in spring 1924, and subsequently excavated withWalter Abel Heurtley in northern Greece, at the site of Vardaroftsa nearThessaloniki in 1925 and at Sarátse in 1929.[27] From 1928, she began looking for her own site to direct excavations; her work in northern Greece, with a focus on the links between the southern Balkans, the northern Aegean, and northwest Anatolia, led her to explore the island ofLesbos in the eastern Aegean.[28] After a trial excavation atMethymna, where she found evidence of occupation from at least the seventh century BCE until the Roman period, she and her colleague Richard Wyatt Hutchinson identified prehistoric pottery at the site ofThermi. Lamb led excavations on this site from 1929 to 1933, largely funded at her own expense, discovering a series ofprehistoric settlements. She visited the archaeological excavation ofTroy in 1930 and 1932, which inspired further work, allowing her to associate Thermi towns IV and V with Troy IIa, and gave a lecture, expanding on these views, as part of the 1936 exhibition at theRoyal Academy of Arts onBritish Archaeological Discoveries in Greece and Crete 1886–1936.[29] Lamb published her results from Thermi as a book in 1936 – for which she was awarded aDoctor of Science degree from Cambridge in 1940, examined byV. Gordon Childe andCarl Blegen – and provided a selection of finds from the dig to the Fitzwilliam Museum's prehistoric gallery.[30][31] She subsequently conducted excavations atAntissa (1931–33; also on Lesbos), where she discovered prehistoric,archaic,classical, andHellenistic settlements and burials, and at the archaicsanctuary ofApollo Phanaios at Kato Phano onChios (1934).[32][33][34][35]
Lamb's archaeological work onLesbos had focused on links betweenThermi andTroy; after this, she turned her attention to ancientAnatolia (modern Turkey), following in the footsteps of other female archaeologists, includingGertrude Bell,Margaret Hardie, andDorothy Lamb (no relation), who had excavated there before the war.[29] Lamb selected the site ofKusura, conducting a trial excavation in 1935 withElinor W. Gardner and full excavations in 1936 and 1937 with James Rivers Barrington Stewart, Eleanor Mary Barrington Stewart,Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop,R.H. Macartney, and Nine Six; as well as excavating the cemetery, finds included a cult site and pottery relating toTroy VI.[36][37][38] Lamb presented her findings in a lecture to theSociety of Antiquaries in London on 'Recent developments in the prehistory of Anatolia' in 1937, pointing out Kusura's location on a major Bronze Age route between central Anatolia and theAegean.[36] A second lecture to theSociety of Antiquaries in 1938 similarly emphasized Kusura's relationships with both of these areas.[39] Lamb also published the Anatolian material held by the Fitzwilliam Museum.[8] She felt that more excavation was required in Anatolia, but her work was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.
Lamb was a founding member of theBritish Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, whose creation was initiated in 1946 byJohn Garstang, and served as its honorary secretary from its formal opening in 1948 until 1957, when she resigned from this role and took on the position of vice president.[40][41] Her work for the BIAA included a programme for the BBC on the Institute and Turkish archaeology, broadcast shortly after the BIAA's creation in 1948; a review of the development of Anatolian archaeology, especially work published in Turkish and German;[42] and a project on the cultures of north-eastern Anatolia in the third millennium BCE, conducted atErzerum andTrabzon in 1952 and published in 1954.[41][43]
In late 1941 Lamb joined theBBC's European Intelligence Unit as a Greek language supervisor, and she was probably responsible for an intelligence report of 17 November 1941 relating to BBC broadcasts to Greece and the Greek resistance to the German occupation.[44] In January 1942 she transferred to the Near Eastern Department's Turkish section, where she continued to work until 1946: her responsibilities included preparing bi-monthly intelligence reports on Turkish radio services and newspapers, and briefing Turkish journalists based in London; she also worked on reports relating to Iran and Arabic-speaking countries.[45] In October 1944 Lamb was seriously injured when aV2 rocket hit her lodgings in north London and required a long period of recuperation, returning to work in late April 1945. Following the end of the war, she resigned from the BBC in February 1946.[46]
Lamb retired from her post at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1958, having become one of the museum's greatest benefactors of Greek and Roman antiquities.[19] She continued to be involved with the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, but from 1959 her health deteriorated, often preventing her from attending meetings of the institute.[47] She died of a stroke on 16 September 1963 in the Cottage Hospital at Easebourne.[2]
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