Do I Really Want to Be an Archaeologist?
Posted: July 7, 2024 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, Book Reviews, History of Archaeology, Mediterranean Studies, Modern Greek History, Philhellenism, Uncategorized, Women's Studies | Tags: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Archaeology, Athens, College Year in Athens, Eugene Vanderpool, Franchthi Cave, greece, History, Karen D. Vitelli, Porto Cheli Project, travel 13 CommentsThe first time I heard her name was in 1986 at Tsoungiza, Nemea. I had just been awarded a Fulbright fellowship to go to Bryn Mawr College for graduate school. James (Jim) C. Wright, one of the cο-directors of the Nemea Valley Project and a Fulbright fellow himself extended an invitation to me, Alexandra (Ada) Kalogirou and Maria Georgopoulou, the other two Greek Fulbrighters, to join the excavation, as a way of becoming familiar with the American way of life and education system. Ada was going to go to Indiana University to study Greek prehistory with Thomas W. Jacobsen (1935-2017) and Karen D. Vitelli (1944-2023).
I must have heard about Vitelli on and off over the next 10-15 years, but I never met her in person. I didn’t even know what she looked like. Then, in 2010, as I was preparing an exhibition to celebrate the 130th anniversary of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (the School, hereafter), I sent an email to various people asking for photos from the time they were students at the School. Stephen (Steve) G. Miller, former director of the School and a student at the School in the late 1960’s, sent me a few. One of the photos showed a tall, slim, dark-haired woman, who made an indelible impression on me. Several years later (2013), Kaddee (as she was known to nearly everyone) appeared at Mochlos together with her friend, archaeologist Catherine Perlès, at a wedding party for Tristan (Stringy) Carter, as guests of Tom Strasser, her former student. (By then Vitelli was Professor Emerita of Archaeology and Anthropology from Indiana University, Bloomington.) That was the first and last time I saw her in person.
Prevailing: Bert Hodge Hill (1910-1915)
Posted: May 4, 2024 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, Classics, History of Archaeology, Uncategorized | Tags: art, Athens, Bert Hodge Hill, Edward D. Perry, Elizabeth Manning Gardiner, first-world-war, George W. Elderkin, greece, James R. Wheeler, Kendall K. Smith, women 2 CommentsIn my January post I explored the first term of Bert Hodge Hill’s long directorship (1906-1926) at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or the School hereafter), which was the longest of any director. After a trial period with annual directors, the School introduced the five-year term with the possibility of one renewal. Rufus B. Richardson (1845-1914), Professor of Greek at Dartmouth, was the first director to serve two terms. He moved to Greece with his wife Alice Linden Bowen (1854-1948) and their two daughters, Lucy and Dorothy, setting up a bustling household and mingling with the local high society. The wedding of his oldest daughter Lucy to Arthur Morton Lythgoe (1868-1934), an American archaeologist working in Egypt, was the event of the year (1902) in Athens, attended by the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Greece.
For Richardson’s successor the School appointed a young, highly promising scholar, Theodore W. Heermance, whose untimely death two years later (1905) from typhoid fever left the School in shock. One wonders what would have been the course of the School had Heermance lived longer. His successor Bert Hodge Hill was the first director at the School who was not a professor or held a Ph.D. Hill’s first term (1906-1911) was a trying experience, but he seemed to be able to deal with the challenges of an overseas post. Knowing some of Hill’s weak points –the most conspicuous being his inability to turn in anything in time– James R. Wheeler (1859-1918), the Chair of the School’s Managing Committee and Professor of Greek Archaeology and Art at Columbia University, kept a close eye on him during this first term.
Read the rest of this entry »Becoming: Bert Hodge Hill, 1906-1910 (Part I)
Posted: January 1, 2024 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, Crete, History of Archaeology, Mediterranean Studies, Modern Greek History, Uncategorized | Tags: Archaeology, Athens, Bert Hodge Hill, europe, George W. Elderkin, greece, James R. Wheeler, Kendall K. Smith, Mochlos, Richard Berry Seager, Theodore W. Heermance, travel 10 Comments
The re-discovery of a small cache of old photos depicting students at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or School hereafter) from 1907-08 inspired me to write about the first years of Bert Hodge Hill’s directorship at the School. [1]
The photos depict four men and one woman: George Wicker Elderkin (1879-1965), Kendall Kerfoot Smith (1882-1929), Charles Edward Whitmore (1887-1970), Henry Dunn Wood (1882-1940), and Elizabeth Manning Gardiner (1879-1958). Of the five, Elderkin, Smith, and Wood were second year students at the School. In 1908, Elderkin, who already held a PhD from Johns Hopkins (1906), succeeded Lacey D. Caskey as Secretary of the School, a position he held for two years (1908-10). Smith came to the School in 1906 holding the Charles Eliot Norton Fellowship, established by James Loeb in 1901 for Harvard or Radcliffe students. Wood, a trained architect with a BS in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, was the second recipient of the Fellowship in Architecture (1906-08) that was funded by the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
Of the new students, Whitmore, another Harvard man, was the Charles Eliot Norton Fellow for 1907, and Gardiner, the only woman in the photos, was a graduate of Radcliffe College (1901), with an MA from Wellesley (1906), and a recipient of the Alice Palmer Fellowship that supported female students.
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From the Archivist's Notebook 