Dorothy Burr Thompson’s Love for the Spirit of the Primitive
Posted: May 1, 2016 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, Biography, Greek Folk Art, History of Archaeology, Mediterranean Studies, Women's Studies | Tags: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Boeotia, Bryn Mawr College, Dorothy Burr Thompson, Eutresis Excavation, George Cram Cook, Parapoungia (Leuctra), Susan Glaspell 6 Comments
Dorothy Burr photographing wedding dance at Parapoungia 1924. ASCSA Archives, Dorothy Burr Thompson Photographic Collection.
“By myself in a Boeotian village, with the cry of the wind and drunken men in my ears! I love this place; it is so full of interest and a sense of real thing – seeing weddings whereat one reddens a finger… plodding one’s weary way homeward over purple fields to the din of bells like an organ cadence, knowing villagers… Oh, it is so full of life…” scribbled Dorothy Burr in her personal diary on November 9, 1924.
She was twenty-four years old and had come to Greece the year before, to study at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or the School hereafter). Before that, she had lived in Philadelphia and studied at Bryn Mawr College. After attending the year-long program of the ASCSA, she and Hazel Hansen, another student of the School, were invited by archaeologist Hetty Goldman to dig at the Neolithic site of Eutresis, not far from Thebes, in Boeotia. Read the rest of this entry »
From the Archivist's Notebook 