Winifred Lamb: Aegean Prehistorian and Museum Curator: (Archaeological Lives)

Winifred Lamb was a pioneering archaeologist in the Aegean and Anatolia. She studied classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and subsequently served in naval intelligence alongside J. D. Beazley during the final stages of the First World War. As war drew to a close, Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, invited Lamb to be the honorary keeper of Greek antiquities. Over the next 40 years she created a prehistoric gallery, marking the university’s contribution to excavations in the Aegean, and developed the museum’s holdings of classical bronzes and Athenian figure-decorated pottery. Lamb formed a parallel career excavating in the Aegean. She was admitted as a student of the British School at Athens and served as assistant director on the Mycenae excavations under Alan Wace and Carl Blegen. After further work at Sparta and on prehistoric mounds in Macedonia, Lamb identified and excavated a major Bronze Age site at Thermi on Lesbos. She conducted a brief excavation on Chios before directing a major project at Kusura in Turkey. She was recruited for the Turkish language section of the BBC during the Second World War, and after the cessation of hostilities took an active part in the creation of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.

Table of Contents:
Introduction ; Chapter 1: The Lamb Family and Early Years ; Chapter 2: Cambridge and Classics ; Chapter 3: The Hope Vases and Naval Intelligence ; Chapter 4: The First Year in Athens (1920–21) ; Chapter 5: Prehistory and the Fitzwilliam Museum ; Chapter 6: Mycenae, Sparta and Macedonia ; Chapter 7: The Fitzwilliam Museum: Developing the Classical Collections ; Chapter 8: The Eastern Aegean: Lesbos and Chios ; Chapter 9: Anatolia and Kusura ; Chapter 10: The War Years ; Chapter 11: The British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara ; Bibliography ; Index

About the Author :
David Gill is Professor of Archaeological Heritage at the University of Suffolk and Visiting Research Fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia. He is a former Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome, and Sir James Knott Fellow at Newcastle University. He was responsible for the Greek and Roman collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, before moving to Swansea University as Reader in Mediterranean Archaeology. In 2012 he received the Outstanding Public Service Award from the Archaeological Institute of America for his research on cultural property.

Review :
'Gill has produced a solid biography about one of the most important women in the history of British archaeology in Greece and Turkey during the first half of the 20th century. [The book is] destined to become a reference work for anyone studying the development of Classical studies at one of England’s premier universities or the history of British archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean.' - Natalia Vogeikoff Brogan (2019): Bryn Mawr Classical Review 'Gill’s well-researched biography is an important contribution highlighting the important role played by individuals of influence, such as Winifred Lamb, and of the British institutions that they were connected to in the development of the disciplines of classical studies and archaeology (in this case, The Fitzwilliam Museum and Cambridge University). [The book highlights] the accomplishments of one of archaeology’s great, but rather obscure protagonists, while at the same time reminding us of how far our discipline has progressed within the last two centuries, and how we, in the present, are paving the way for more changes to come.' - Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory (2022): Journal of Greek Archaeology