Winifred Lamb

Winifred Lamb
Born 3 November, 1894
Campden Hill
Died 16 September, 1963
Easebourne
Nationality United Kingdom
Education Newnham College
Employer FitzWilliam Museum
Known for Honorary Keeper of Greek Antiquities

Winifred Lamb (1894-1963) was a British art historian, archeologist, and museum curator who specialised in Greek, Roman, Anatolian cultures and artifacts. The bulk of her career was spent as the Honorary Keeper of Greek Antiquities at the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum from 1920 - 1958.[1][2] She was the first woman archaeologist involved in the British Anatolian excavations,[3] and the Fitzwilliam museum states that she was a "generous benefactor and raising the profile of the collections through groundbreaking research, acquisitions and publications."[4]

Life

Lamb was born on 3 November 1894 at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, London. She was the daughter of Edmund Lamb, a former Member of Parliament, and Mabel Lamb.[5] Winifred Lamb attended Newnham College of Cambridge University, studying Classics, and earning her degree in 1917. She joined the British Naval Intelligence Department and served throughout World War I, probably working on the decipherment of coded messages sent to German submarines.[2] It was here that Lamb met John Beazley, a renowned archaeologist also working in British Intelligence, who encouraged her in her research.[6] Her fieldwork and excavation skills were honed at the British School at Athens, which she began attending in 1920.[7] In the same year, Lamb was appointed as the first Honorary Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; her work there involved arranging new displays and sorting and cataloguing the collections and new acquisitions, as well as enhancing the collections by donating numerous items herself (especially bronzes and pottery) and encouraging others to do so.[2] Key publications from her work at the Fitzwilliam include a book on Greek and Roman bronze statues[8] and two volumes of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum (corpus of ancient vases).[9][10]

Lamb took part in excavations in Mycenae, Sparta, and Macedonia. Following her work in Macedonia, Lamb had started to consider the link between the southern Balkans, the northern Aegean, and northwest Anatolia; her search led her to Lesbos, where in 1928 she identified the site of Thermi. She led her own excavation on this site from 1929 - 1933, publishing her results as a book in 1936.[11] She visited the archaeological excavation of Troy in 1930 and 1932, which inspired further work, allowing her to associate Thermi towns IV and V with Troy IIa. She gave a lecture, expanding on these views, as part of the 1936 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts on British Archaeological Discoveries in Greece and Crete 1886 - 1936.[12]

After this, she turned her attention to Ankara where, despite the problems for women working in Turkey at this time, other women archaeologists, including Gertrude Bell, Margaret Hardie, and Dorothy Lamb had excavated before the war.[12] She excavated at Kusura in 1936 and 1937, and gave a lecture to the Society of Antiquaries in London on recent developments in the pre-history of Anatolia in 1937. Her interest in the area eventually helped establish the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, of which she served as honorary secretary from 1948 - 1957.[13] She also published the Anatolian material held by the Fitzwilliam Museum.[2]

Lamb felt that more excavation was required in Anatolia, but her work was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. In 1941 she joined the Greek language service of the BBC, and from 1942 to 1946 worked for the Turkish section of the Near Eastern department of the BBC. Towards the end of the war she was seriously injured when a V2 rocket hit her lodgings in north London, killing her housemates. She continued her work for the Fitzwilliam Museum until 1958, when she resigned in order to focus on her work on Anatolia and her involvement with the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara; her donations and her collecting of items over this period had greatly enhanced the Museum's collections of classical antiquities.[2] She died seven years after her retirement to Borden Wood on 16 September 1963 in Easebourne.[5]

She is the author of numerous books on Greek and Roman antiquities, including the 1929 publication Greek and Roman Bronzes, which was standard reading for studies on the subject.[14] She also wrote a number of reviews for the Journal of Hellenic Studies.

Selected publications

  • Greek and Roman Bronzes (Argonaut, 1929)
  • Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain. Cambridge -- Fitzwilliam Museum I & II (Oxford University Press, 1930 & 1936)
  • Excavations at Thermi in Lesbos (Cambridge University Press, 1936)

References

  1. ↑ Fitzwilliam Museum Antiquities
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Gill, David W.J. (1998). "Winifred Lamb and the Fitzwilliam Museum". In Stray, Christopher. Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society. pp. 135–156. ISBN 0-906014-23-9.
  3. ↑ "Lamb, Winifred". Dictionary of Art Historians. 2018-02-21. Retrieved 2018-09-25.
  4. ↑ Fitzwilliam Museum Antiquities
  5. 1 2 "Lamb, Winifred (1894–1963), archaeologist and museum curator | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/67872, retrieved 2018-09-25
  6. ↑ "Lamb, Winifred". Dictionary of Art Historians. 2018-02-21. Retrieved 2018-09-25.
  7. ↑ David W. J. Gill. Anatolian Studies. Vol. 50, (2000)Preview
  8. ↑ Lamb, Winifred (1929). Ancient Greek and Roman Bronzes. Argonaut.
  9. ↑ Lamb, Winifred (1930). Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain. Cambridge--Fitzwilliam Museum. University Press.
  10. ↑ Lamb, Winifred (1936). Corpvs Vasorvm Antiquorvm: Cambridge 2, Fitzwilliam Museum.
  11. ↑ Lamb, Winifred (2014-10-02). Excavations at Thermi in Lesbos. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107433106.
  12. 1 2 David W. J. Gill, A Rich and Promising Site: Winifred Lamb (1894 - 1963), Kusura and Anatolian archaeology in Anatolian Studies, Vol 50 (2000) pp1-10
  13. ↑ Getzel M. Cohen, Martha Sharp Joukowsky. Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists. University of Michigan 2004.
  14. ↑ "Lamb, Winifred". Dictionary of Art Historians. 2018-02-21. Retrieved 2018-09-25.
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