Dorothy Burr Thompson

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Group photo with Dorothy Burr Thompson (seated, center) during an excavation in Athens in 1933

Dorothy Burr Thompson (born August 19, 1900 in Philadelphia , † May 10, 2001 in Hightstown, New Jersey ) was an American classical archaeologist . It was considered a specialist in terracotta - sculptures of Hellenism .

Life

Dorothy Burr was born in 1900 to the lawyer Charles Henry Burr, Jr. and his wife, the writer Anna Robeson Brown. She learned ancient languages ​​at Miss Hill's School and the Latin School in Philadelphia . She was practicing Latin at the age of nine and spoke ancient Greek at the age of twelve. At the age of 13 she was allowed to travel to Europe. From 1917 to 1919 Burr lived with her family in London, where the father worked as an advisor to the British government. In 1919 she returned to the United States and began studying Greek and archeology at Bryn Mawr College with Rhys Carpenter and Mary Hamilton Swindler , from which she graduated with honors in 1923. With the European scholarship of the college she was allowed to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and worked on excavations with Carl Blegen in Phleius and Hetty Goldman in Eutresis . In 1925, Burr discovered a tholos , which turned out to be the tomb of the ruling couple of Midea .

After two years in Greece, Burr returned to Bryn Mawr College and received his doctorate there in 1931. Her dissertation was a detailed catalog of 117 terracotta figurines from the Hellenistic era from Myrina in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston .

From 1932 she took part in the excavations of the Agora in Athens . The deputy director was Canadian archaeologist Homer Thompson , whom Dorothy Burr married in 1934. While Homer Thompson was curator of the Royal Ontario Museum's collection of antiquities and a research fellow at the University of Toronto , Dorothy Thompson interrupted her career because of the birth of three daughters and only worked in Greece during the summer months. In 1936, Burr Thompson discovered the garden of the Temple of Hephaestus on the Athens Agora. In the 1950s, she reconstructed the garden and replanted it.

In 1946 Homer Thompson became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and Burr Thompson became acting director of the Royal Ontario Museum until she followed her husband to Princeton a year later, where she worked in her own office at the university. In the following years she held visiting professorships at the University of Pennsylvania , Bryn Mawr College, Princeton University and Oberlin College .

Awards

In 1972 Thompson received an honorary degree from the College of Wooster in Ohio . In 1987 Dorothy Burr Thompson received the Gold Medal from the Archaeological Institute of America for her achievements .

Fonts (selection)

See Bibliography of Dorothy Burr Thompson. In: Hesperia Vol. 51, 1982, pp. 369-374.

  • Terra-cottas from Myrina in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . A. Holzhausen's successor, Vienna 1934 (= dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1931).
  • Swans and Amber. Some Early Greek Lyrics . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1948.
  • with Gladys R. Davidson , Lucy Talcott : Small Objects from the Pnyx . 2 volumes, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Baltimore 1943–1956.
  • Troy: the Terra-Cotta Figurines of the Hellenistic Period . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1963.
  • An Ancient Shopping Center: the Athenian Agora . American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton 1971.
  • with Alison Frantz : Miniature Sculpture from the Athenian Agora . American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton 1959
  • Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience: Aspects of the Ruler-Cult . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1973.
  • with Homer Thompson , Susan Rotroff : Hellenistic Pottery and Terracottas . American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton 1987.
  • Three Centuries of Hellenistic Terracottas . In: Hesperia Vol. 31, 1962, pp. 244-262.

literature

  • Christine Mitchell Havelock: Dorothy Burr Thompson (b.1900): Classical Archaeologist . In: Claire R. Sherman (Ed.): Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820-1979 . Greenwood Press, Westport 1981, pp. 357-375.
  • Anahad O'Connor: Dorothy Burr Thompson, 101, Archaeologist , The New York Times , May 24, 2001
  • Jamiee P. Uhlenbrock: Dorothy Burr Thompson . In: American Journal of Archeology 108, 2004, pp. 631-633.
  • Jamiee P. Uhlenbrock: Dorothy Burr Thompson . In: Martha Sharp Joukowsky, Barbara S. Lesko (Eds.): Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archeology . Brown University ( Online as PDF )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Anahad O'Connor: Dorothy Burr Thompson, 101, Archaeologist , The New York Times , May 24 2,001th
  2. ↑ a b c d Estate of Dorothy Burr Thompson , American School of Classical Studies at Athens
  3. ↑ Dorothy Burr Thompson - 1987 Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement , Archaeological Institute of America, accessed March 1, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Thompson, Dorothy Burr
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burr, Dorothy (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Classical Archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH 19th August 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 2001
Place of death Hightstown, New Jersey