Virginia Grace

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Virginia Randolph Grace (born January 9, 1901 in New York City , † May 22, 1994 in Athens ) was an American archaeologist . She is known for her research into ancient amphorae , the stamps of which give information about the place and date of manufacture. Based on the excavations on the Athens agora , she created an extensive archive of amphorae temples from all over the Mediterranean . She established the analysis of amphorae as a method of archaeological dating and as a source for the history of the ancient economy.

life and work

Family and childhood

Virginia Randolph Grace was the daughter of Virginia Fitz-Randolph and Lee Ashley, who was a cotton merchant. She grew up as the second oldest of six siblings - five sisters and one brother - in New York and attended the Brearley School there.

Training and work before World War II

Grace studied Greek and English at Bryn Mawr College and received her bachelor's degree in 1922. She worked for a short time at the Metropolitan Museum before embarking on a trip around the Mediterranean in 1923 . She then taught English and mathematics at the Brearley School and other schools for a few years. In 1927 she took part in a study program at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens . She then returned to Bryn Mawr College to study Classical Archeology . In 1930 she obtained her master’s degree there.

1931 Grace traveled with a scholarship of Bryn Mawr College in Turkey . In Pergamon she gained her first experience with archaeological excavations . There she examined the stamps of the roof tiles , but also saw the finds on stamped amphorae handles and recognized their value for archeology. In the same year she worked on the Halai excavation project under the direction of Hetty Goldman and on the excavations at the University of Pennsylvania at Lapithos .

From 1932 Grace worked on the excavations of the Agora of Athens . She examined the amphorae temple discovered there. In 1934 she received a Ph.D. for her work Stamped Amphora Handles Found in the American Excavations in the Athenian Agora.

In 1935 Grace began, again under the direction of Hetty Goldman, to investigate the amphorae handles of the excavations in Tarsos . From 1936 she became a Special Research Fellow of the Agora excavation in Athens for the investigation of amphorae handles. The research was funded by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens with successive small grants. For comparative studies at other archaeological sites, Grace had to raise additional scholarships. In 1938 she received a Guggenheim grant to travel to Alexandria , Antioch , Tarsos, Cyprus and Corinth .

Activity in World War II

Virginia Grace had just returned from her research trip to Athens when World War II began. She had a boat ticket for the crossing to the USA, but at the last minute gave it to a friend so that she could bring her eight-year-old daughter to safety. So Grace stayed in Athens and continued her studies in the library. From September 1940 she also lived in the American School for security reasons. When Fascist Italy attacked Greece in October 1940 , Virginia Grace was the last to leave the American School. She first traveled to Istanbul , then to Cyprus, where she continued the excavations in ancient Kourion . In Cyprus, she completed training as a nurse with the British Army and, over the next two years, looked after British soldiers who had been evacuated there. When archaeological field research was finally no longer possible in Cyprus either, she brought the finds from the excavations to safety and fled to Alexandria .

In 1942 Grace signed up for the Office of Strategic Services , the secret service of the United States Department of War . She first worked at the US Consulate General in Cairo , where she decoded messages and translated them from Greek. There she worked with other American archaeologists recruited by the Office of Strategic Services. She enjoyed decoding and cataloging messages, and compared it to her work as an archaeologist. After the British defeat against German troops in northern Egypt, the consulate staff had to be evacuated to Khartoum . Virginia Grace previously hid her documents from the Agora dig in one of the royal tombs of Giza . Between 1942 and 1945 she worked in Khartoum, Asmara ( Eritrea ), Ankara , Istanbul, Izmir and finally again in Cairo. At the end of the war, Grace was the last person in the Secret Service's office in Cairo, charged with destroying its records.

post war period

Grace was invited to Princeton University as a visiting scholar during the war . In 1945 she traveled to the USA and stayed in Princeton for three years, where she resumed her comparative study of amphorae stamps and published other parts of her archive, which now contained information on more than 100,000 amphorae stamps. In 1949 she returned to Greece. From then on, she devoted herself to her amphora project for the rest of her life, for which she could now employ several employees. She classified the amphora handles from the collections of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and Charles University in Prague and those from the excavations on Rhodes and Delos , the latter in collaboration with the École française d'Athènes . Grace still had no permanent job, but lived on small scholarships from the American School and the support of her family. In 1950 she received a Fulbright grant, with which she financed her research in Rhodes, and in 1954 a second Guggenheim grant.

In her popular science book Amphoras and the Ancient Wine Trade , published in 1961 , Grace made her research method known to a wider audience. She analyzed the wine amphorae in the Antikythera shipwreck and dated them between 80 and 70 BC. It contributed significantly to the dating of the entire wreck. One of her most important research results was the dating of the Middle Stoa of the Athens Agora. Based on the amphorae handles found in the backfill of the foundation , she determined the time of construction to be around 183 BC. Through this success Grace was able to prove the importance of her amphora studies and secure the future of her project. In the end, their archive comprised around 150,000 amphorae temples, around 25,000 of them from the Athens Agora. Her employees continued to run it after her death.

Grace lived in Athens until her death in 1994. Your amphora stamp card index, your scientific correspondence and your private library are kept in the Blegen Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Honors

In 1989, Grace received the Gold Medal from the Archaeological Institute of America .

Fonts (selection)

See Bibliography of Virginia R. Grace. In: Hesperia. Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Volume 51, 1982, pp. 365-367 ( digitized version ).

  • The Stamped Amphora Handles Found in the American Excavations in the Athenian Agora 1931-1932. A Catalog Treated as a Chronological Study. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1934.
  • Wine jars. In: The Classical Journal Volume 42, 1947, pp. 443-452.
  • The Canaanite Jar. In: Saul Weinberg (Ed.): The Aegean and the Near East. JJ Augustin, Locust Valley 1956, pp. 80-109.
  • Les timbres amphoriques de Thasos. (= Études thasiennes. Volume 4.) E. de Boccard, Paris 1957 (with Anne-Marie Bon and Antoine Bon).
  • Amphoras and the Ancient Wine Trade. (= Excavations of the Athenian Agora. Picture Book. Volume 6.) American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton 1961.
  • with Gladys Davidson Weinberg, G. Roger Edwards: The Antikythera Shipwreck Reconsidered. (= Transactions of the American Philosophical Society New series Volume 55, Part 3.) American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1965.
  • with Oskar Ziegenaus and Gioia De Luca: Das Asklepieion (= antiquities of Pergamon. Volume 11). W. de Gruyter, Berlin 1968.
  • with Philippe Bruneau, Claude Vatin, Ulpiano Bezerra de Meneses and others: Exploration archéologique de Délos. Faite par l'École Française d'Athènes. Volume 27: L'îlot de la Maison des comédiens. E. de Boccard, Paris 1970.
  • Stamped amphora handles. In: Jan Bouzek (Ed.): Anatolian Collection of Charles University. Kyme I . Universita Karlova, Prague 1974, pp. 89-98.
  • The Middle Stoa Dated by Amphora Stamps. In: Hesperia. Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Vol. 54, 1985, pp. 1-54.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Sara A. Immerwahr: Virginia Grace. In: Martha Sharp Joukowski, Barbara S. Lesko: Breaking Ground. Women in Old World Archeology. 1996 (PDF, accessed February 23, 2017).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Virginia Grace on Bryn Mawr College pages , accessed February 23, 2017.
  3. ^ A b Susan Heuck Allen: Classical Spies. American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2011, ISBN 978-0-4721-1769-7 , p. 23.
  4. ^ Susan Heuck Allen: Classical Spies. American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2011, ISBN 978-0-4721-1769-7 , p. 26.
  5. ^ A b Susan Heuck Allen: Classical Spies. American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2011, ISBN 978-0-4721-1769-7 , p. 122.
  6. ^ Virginia Grace on Brown University , accessed February 23, 2017.
  7. ^ TBL Webster: Review: The Antikythera Shipwreck Reconsidered by GD Weinberg. In: The Journal of Hellenic Studies . Volume 87, 1967, p. 189.
  8. ^ Virginia Grace: The Middle Stoa Dated by Amphora Stamps. In: Hesperia. Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Volume 54, 1985, p. 24.
  9. ^ A b Virginia R. Grace— 1989 Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement , accessed February 23, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Grace, Virginia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Randolph Grace, Virginia (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Classical Archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1994
Place of death Athens