Hetty Goldman

Hetty Goldman (born December 19, 1881 in New York - † May 4, 1972 ) was an American archaeologist . She is particularly known for her research on Greece's contacts with the Middle East . Goldman was one of the first women to work as excavators in Greece and Turkey.

childhood and education

Hetty Goldman was the third of the four children of Sarah Adler and Julius Goldman, a wealthy lawyer. Both of her parents had German roots: Her maternal grandfather, Samuel Adler (1809–1891), had emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1856 as a reform Jewish rabbi ; her paternal grandfather, Marcus Goldman , emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1848, where he founded a bank that later became Goldman Sachs . Hetty Goldman and her siblings all attended the Sachs School for Boys and Girls , founded by their uncle Julius Sachs (1849-1934) , where emphasis was placed on classical education. Julius Sachs was a classical philologist and from an early age inspired his niece for classical studies .

Hetty Goldman received a scholarship from Bryn Mawr College in 1899 , where she graduated in English and Ancient Greek in 1903 . She then studied from 1903 to 1904 for a year at Columbia University in New York. She then went on a trip to Italy , where she visited many archaeological sites, in order to continue her studies in New York from 1906. In 1909 she received her Masters degree from Radcliffe College in Classical Philology and Archeology with a thesis on the representations of the Oresty in Greek vase painting .

Archaeological work

In 1910 she was the first woman to receive a scholarship from Harvard University to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens . At first she was met with a certain amount of suspicion there, and when she applied for a permit to excavate Eutresis in Boeotia , she was turned down on the grounds that she could be overwhelmed by the work. In 1911, however, she was employed together with Alice Lesley Walker as head of the excavations in Halai in eastern Lokris . Financially supported by Goldman's father, they first excavated the city's acropolis and some tombs. After her scholarship was extended to 1912, Goldman spent some time studying the finds that went to the Thebes Archaeological Museum and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and briefly participated in the excavations at Delphi and the Athens Acropolis . In 1912 she planned the second excavation campaign in Halai, but had to interrupt the work because of the outbreak of the First Balkan War . She stayed in Athens and deepened her analysis of the finds. After the first armistice, she undertook further excavations in Halai in 1913 and 1914, during which she also explored the Roman and Byzantine parts of the city. In 1915 she began to publish the results. In 1916 she received her Ph.D. from Radcliffe College for her dissertation on the terracotta figures from the Halai necropolis . After the war, she resumed excavations in Halai and published her revised dissertation.

In 1920 Goldman was appointed director of new excavations by the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. She went on a research trip to the west coast of Turkey with her fellow student Carl Blegen , who, as the representative of the American School, was to lead the project with her . Their choice finally fell on the then still unexplored Ionian city ​​of Kolophon . With the support of the Greek army, they began excavations in 1922 and uncovered parts of the houses and shrines and some graves that went back to the Bronze Age . In the same year, however, they had to stop their research because of Greece's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War .

They started a new campaign in Kolophon in 1925. In the meantime, Goldman concentrated on her work on mainland Greece. She carried out some additional digs in Halai and took part in digs in Phleius . In addition, she planned an excavation campaign in Eutresis, for which she was accepted as director this time. The discovery of Early and Middle Helladic settlements in Eutresis sparked Goldman's interest in the prehistoric era in Greece.

After completing the Eutresis dig, Goldman became a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore . She also undertook a large-scale survey on a trip to Yugoslavia with leading Yugoslav archaeologists . In 1932 she took over the management of part of the newly started excavations in Starčevo , where she studied the Neolithic material. In the years 1932-34 she also supervised the processing of Greek and Roman ceramics from the excavations in the Agora of Athens .

The discovery of Mycenaean pottery in Cilicia in southern Turkey rekindled Goldman's interest in Turkish archeology. In 1934 she set out on a survey in Cilicia and began new archaeological research in Tarsus . Her research focus was on the contacts of the Hittites to Greece. The excavations made considerable progress in the chronology of Hittite pottery.

In 1936, Hetty Goldman became - again as the first woman - professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton . She continued the excavations in Tarsus even when the political situation in Europe became more uncertain in 1938 after the start of the Second World War . In 1938 Goldman returned to the United States because her father fell ill. After the death of her father in late 1938, she initially stayed in Princeton, where she campaigned for the expansion of the archaeological department and in particular for the promotion of young women archaeologists. She published further evaluations of the excavations in Halai and Tarsus.

In 1947 Goldman took a leave of absence from the university and made a final visit to Tarsus with the architect Theresa Goell , who later took over the management of the excavations. This was Goldman's last field campaign. In the same year she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She survived an operation, but then withdrew from field work and retired . However, she continued to visit various archaeological excavations and published a comparative study of the excavations in Tarsus and Mersin-Yumuktepe with John Garstang , among others . She published the final results of the excavations from Tarsus in several extensive volumes. Until the end of her life, she traveled and gave scientific lectures.

Further commitment

When she had to interrupt her archaeological work because of the First Balkan War, Hetty Goldman volunteered for the American Red Cross and began working as a nurse in Thessaloniki . During the First World War she worked again for the Red Cross to help the war victims among the members of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki . This commitment also took her to other cities with important Jewish communities in the Balkans.

During her tenure as a professor at Princeton, she continued to support war victims in Greece and was a co-founder of the American School Committee for Aid to Greece . She was also a member of the Committee on Education for the Community Services Committee War of Princeton supported, the researchers concluded before Nazism had fled to the United States.

In Greece and Turkey, Hetty Goldman fought against the illegal trade in antiquities and advocated the remains of finds in these countries. In Tarsus, for example, she bought coins from the local art trade from the nearby excavations and donated them to the Adana Museum .

Honors

In 1950 Goldman was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1966 she was the second person after Carl Blegen to be awarded the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement of the Archaeological Institute of America .

literature

• Machteld J. Mellink , Kathleen M. Quinn: Hetty Goldman, 1881–1972. In: Getzel M. Cohen, Martha Sharp Joukowsky (Eds.): Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists. University of Michigan Press, Michigan 2004, ISBN 0-472-11372-0 , pp. 298-350.

Web links

• Works by and about Hetty Goldman at Open Library
• Hetty Goldman. Work and Legacy at the Institute for Advanced Study
• Portrait with photos on the pages of Bryn Mawr College
• Hetty Goldman in the Jewish Women's Archive