Here Lies Bonita, UTK Pup

Before the summer began and Poggio Colla's excavation became my primary blogging topic, I was engaged in a mini-project about what I dubbed 'heirloom archaeology.' This referred to locally significant objects in a domestic structure inhabited for over 60 years by my family. When it came to the blog, I never quite made it inside the house, mostly focusing on historically interesting objects outside in the yard, such as plants, religious images, and tools.

There is one class of items that I did not address, however, yet an emotional and archaeologically significant one: sixty years worth of pets. Most recently Tigger, after bravely falling in battle against stray dogs, joined his predecessors in the garden. My aunt and uncle's house is not unusual in this regard, and I recently came across an unexpected example here at UTK.

I should note first that it's only been in recent years that theorists have begun to reconsider the common divide between mortuary and domestic archaeology. While cemeteries were often separated out from living areas (the tombs located outside ancient city gates being illustrative examples), ever since Jericho bodies have been buried within houses. Indeed, sometimes they ARE houses. Kostis Kourelis, for example, conceptualized the Byzantine house as one constructed not just of harder architectural materials, but one built from the organic materials of flesh, bone, and burials.The living and the lost inhabit the same space in the archaeological record far more frequently than previously recognized.

I've been thinking about mortuary archaeology lately thanks to UTK's campus, which provides several examples of a rather thought-provoking nature. First, there's the Woodland-era Native American burial mound in the UT gardens, which might date back to the 7th c. CE. Then there is the Body Farm with its in-situ remains studied by students working in forensic anthropology, together with over 2,500 human skeletons stored under the football stadium in the anthro department.

And then there is the modern burial of that domestic pet next to the library, in what used to be the back garden of the Tyson family's home. The Neoclassical ('Colonial Classic') Tyson House is now part of the campus' office building collection. No Tysons live in it any longer and the six acres of their luxurious property, complete with a ballroom for their daughter's 1913 debut, has in the hundred years since its construction been swallowed up by the campus. That daughter Isabella had a puppy who, supposedly, her father brought home to her from a military stint in Puerto Rico. Named Bonita, the puppy would be lovingly interred in a back garden, much like pets today.

The former back garden with the back of the yellow Tyson House.

Little Bonita's grave would be attached to the deed when Isabella sold the house in the 30s, with the result that all future owners must leave it inviolate. My first thought on learning about little Bonita's spot was that it seems like a great comparative example for teachers covering ancient sanctuaries and abatons. The beautiful back garden of the Tyson home, where the city elite wandered at the beginning of the last century, is now a parking lot. A parking lot with this strange thing under a shady tree:

Here lies Bonita.

There's no inscription, there's no image, no marker with an Ode to Puppies, flowering bushes, red ferns, or other such clues as to what lies beneath. There is nothing whatsoever to indicate to the passing students that such an interesting (and rather touching) remnant of history rests here, on their path to Starbucks.

Just a boundary marker and a blank stone. I have to say its a bit strange to me that this is the case, especially at a university with a mascot that's a dog! If nothing else, it's certainly a reminder about memory, mortuary archaeology, and how easy it is to forget.

Even More Graves of Archaeologists

Way back in the day when I was a more dedicated blogger, I did some posts about the graves of archaeologists (here and here and here [not an archaeologist, but whatever]). I always meant to follow up with some additional posts but, as happens, I never got around to it. I still think it's an interesting project, though, so I thought it would be worth returning to.

Here we go:

John Pendlebury's story has reached truly historic and heroic proportions. He was a British archaeologist associated with the British School next door to the American School. He worked at two of the most famous Mediterranean excavations EVAH, Tell el-Amarna in Egypt and Knossos on Crete. During WWII, he stayed on Crete as a British spy and in so doing won the hearts of Crete's entire population. The story goes that nobody on Crete knew who the hell Sir Arthur Evans was, but they all knew Pendlebury. He was wounded and captured during the German assault on Crete. The Germans stood him up against a cottage wall and shot him through the head. He's buried at the Commonwealth cemetery at Souda Bay.

Like Pendlebury, George Mylonas had his own war story. A soldier during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), he was captured as a POW. His Smyrna-based family lost virtually everything in the war, but he went on to become a prominent archaeologist in Greece. He was a student of David Robinson at Olynthus and in the late '20s he even served as the Bursar of the American School in Athens. He's most famous for directing the excavations at Mycenae - he's the guy who led the excavation of Grave Circle B. He's buried down the hill from Mycenae in the same little cemetery as Humpfrey Payne. Like the Blegen's grave in the First Cemetery in Athens, Mylonas' sarcophagus is decked out in a way that links him to the ancient peoples he studied - the spiral-y things running along the bottom are a decorative motif visible in Mycenean art. (I'd like to thank Vassiliki Pliatsika for providing me with the pictures of Mylonas' grave. Thanks!)

And just as a quick note, there are many more graves of archaeologists and classicists in the First Cemetery that need to be documented. For example, if you feel like stopping by, visit these people (courtesy of Dan Leon):

Arnold Hugh Martin Jones (1904-1970) - Author of "The Later Roman Empire, 284-602" and apparently popular with all the Late Antiquity peeps, even if he wasn't big on archaeology. He had a heart-attack on a boat on his way to deliver a series of lectures in Thessaloniki.

Adolf Furtwaengler [whom I've already noted - but it doesn't hurt to give him further props] (1853-1907) - Wrote a dissertation on vase painting, was instrumental in the development of the 'comparative method,' participated in the excavations at Olympia, and co-authored the first corpus of pottery finds ever (Mykenische Thongefaesse, from Aegina).  He helped to come up with the idea of using pottery and stratigraphy to create a chronology.  He wrote a bunch of stuff on vase painting and sculpture, ran a few museums and digs, published a monograph on Aegina, but contracted dysentery there and died.

Gregory Vlastos (1907-1991) - Possibly the Gregory Vlastos who published widely on pre-Socratic, Socratic, and Platonic philosophy and is credited by some with bringing about a renewed interest in Plato in the philosophical community.

When does memory become history?

And by history, I mean the kind that people put in museums. How long does it take, and how long should it take, for museums to start educating people about certain events?

There's obviously a whole shebang of reasons that a particular subject becomes the focus of a museum; the social and political influences are too numerous to name. But, the last time I was in Greece and Italy there was one museum that I wanted to go to that just did not exist: the World War II museum.

At some places in Greece, the history of WWII was more apparent and alive in local legend than in others. Crete's a good example, where the German attacks left behind a truely staggering mythology, complete with gun-toting grannies and knife-wielding civilians. Not to mention a number of memorial cemeteries.

The grave of legendary archaeologist, spy and adventurer John Pendlebury, located at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Souda Bay.

While I was in Italy there were a good number of WWII memorials and the events of the war were fairly easy to learn about if you knew where to look and who to ask. They also turned up in unexpected places:

The amazing shrine of Father Marcello Morgante in the crypt of the cathedral in Ascoli Piceno features a series of mosaics commemorating his life. One of them shows the priest and other locals giving aid to British and American escaped prisoners of war.

I reckon that most Americans don't know about the two gigantic war cemeteries that our government pays to keep meticuliously groomed outside of Rome and Florence.

When I visited this summer, a gregarious guard at the cemetery in Florence said that of the 200 people to show up that day, only three (my party) were Americans. That was a bit sobering, although if it weren't for the Marine in my midst I wouldn't have known about the site either.


At what point will the memorials give way to museums, I wonder?

More Graves of Archaeologists

So, to continue with one of my many half-finished side projects, it's time to document a few more archaeologists' graves in Greece. (Previous entries: 1, 2)

Last time, Bill Caraher informed me that the 'Big O' Oscar Broneer and his wife were buried in Corinth, so I wrote to Guy Sanders* to find out more about late members of the Corinth crew.

Oscar Broneer and his wife Verna are buried at the Church of Agia Anna, on the north side of the village of Old Corinth. Guy snapped some pictures for me and he relates that "the Broneers are in the NE corner in a plot granted in perpetuity in gratitude for the relief work he and Verna did in the community after WWII."

Oscar Broneer. Note that many of the graves of foreigners in Greece list both the place of their birth and the place of their death.

Verna's tombstone with a relief carving of an ancient lamp and an actual lamp in metal. Incidentally, the Broneer's son Jon Winroth became a famous international wine critic, although he first spent time studying fortresses built by Ali Pasha in Greek Epirus.

Broneer is one of those Greek archaeological giants. He was the Professor of Archaeology (i.e. pre-Mellon Professor) and his stint as the excavation director of Corinth and Isthmia has been called one "of the most shining chapters of the American School's excavations... (p.170)." He published the first typology of ancient lamps (see Verna's grave above) and, as all the internet blurbs about him relate, on his very first day of excavating at the site of the Isthmian Games he discovered the Temple of Poseidon. Not bad. Nowadays, Broneer's name will be recognizable to all poor, desperate graduate students, since the Broneer Fellowship is much sought after by those who want to study in Athens or Rome.

The other late Corinthian still residing in the area is Darrell Amyx. Like Broneer, Amyx got his PhD from Berkeley and in fact went on to found the History of Art Department there. He became a big fan of studying vase-painting a la Beazley - Morelli , attempting to identify the hand of specific painters. His ashes, Guy tells me, were spread over Akrocorinth.

Archaeologists having 'buchman' (snack time) beneath Akrocorinth.

As a final note, one of Corinth's finest is also buried in the First Cemetery in Athens. Theodore Woolsey Heermance is about as Old School American School as you can get. The "gruff, red-bearded professor" had already started excavating at Corinth by 1896 and was in the trenches throughout the early Teens.

Heermance's excavation notebook from 1903, Corinth Notebook #19 (courtesy of the digitized notebooks on the ASCSA site!).

Plus, you can buy his 1901 book Greek Art for $175 on Ebay!

*Thanks, Guy!

The Graves of Archaeologists

I was just looking over Troels Myrup's blog Iconoclasm and noticed a post he did a few months back entitled 'Staying Behind.' It featured the gravestone of G.L. Harding and reflected on the fact that many foreign archaeologists end up being buried in the land where they dug, rather than the one in which they were born.

While I was on the Regular Program, I tried to document all the graves of archaeologists that we came across. Some are buried on the very site they excavated:

Ekrem Akurgal, one of the most important experts on Turkish archaeology, is buried at the site of Old Smyrna (in the modern city of Izmir). Check him out in this video.

Humfrey Payne is buried just down the hill from Mycenae. He was the director of the British School from 1929 until 1936 when he died of blood poisoning. His wife was Dilys Powell, a journalist who also wrote the pithy Villa Ariadne, a lively view of the archaeologists who worked at Knossos. Humfrey Payne also excavated the Sanctuary of Hera at Perachora where I gave a site report.

The gravestones of many archaeologists reference the ancient world or the work they did in life:

Carl and Elizabeth Blegen, whom I have discussed numerous times on this site, are buried beneath a headstone that mimics the grave stelae from Mycenae.

The grave of Heinrich Schliemann, the excavator of Troy and Mycenae is of course the most recognizable example of this. His tomb, in the shape of a temple, is decorated with scenes from the mythic Greek past and also with scenes of excavation. Ancient and modern heroics.

An extraordinary number of famous names are buried together in the First Cemetery in Athens. Because the cemetery is Orthodox, the burials of the non-Orthodox (foreigners) are separated off by a fence. Walking through that collection of graves is an exceedingly strange experience. Headstone after headstone bears a familiar name. Famous archaeologists from the earlier days of the discipline lie beside others who have made a more recent impact.

William Bell Dinsmoor, for example, is famous for his architectural studies. His son (also named William Dinsmoor) followed in his footsteps, and I always have to do a double take when I see their names, just to make sure I'm looking at Sr. or Jr. Whenever I hear them mentioned, I will always think of Margie Miles saying 'Dinsmoor' while pointing up to some architectural oddity.

Adolf Furtwangler is a total legend. His impact on the study of the ancient world was enormous. John Boardman remarked that he was "probably the greatest classical archaeologist of all time."

Eugene Vanderpoole was the Mellon Professor (the Professor of Archaeology) at the School exactly 50 years ago. It was he who dragged Pierre McKay all over Greece. As Kostis Kourelis has pointed out, his house was considered something of an architectural superstar in Athens. I most frequently heard about Vanderpool in reference to life at the School during WWII. He was placed in a concentration camp and survived, but his health was never the same after. Whereas Furtwangler was a legend for his scholarship, in the many tales that I heard, Vanderpool was an altogether different sort, a giant, much beloved, a war hero. His presence and heroism still hang over the School, especially in the tender words of those who remember him.

And then there is Bert Hodge Hill and his wife Ida Thallon Hill. Ida has always been of great interest to me because of her pioneering role as one of the first women to ever excavate on the Greek mainland. The physical presence (books, furniture, etc.) that the Hills and Blegens left at the American School is of endless fascination to me. But most importantly of all, the Hills paid for me to attend the Regular Year Program by generously endowing a fellowship. Thank you, Bert Hodge Hill!

While at the American School, the monumental personages buried there at the First Cemetery became much more than names to me. They suddenly became the teachers and mentors of friends and of my own teachers and mentors. They became the topics of stories, reminiscences and School myth. They stopped being just recognizable names on book covers and beneath article titles. They're no longer just bibliography.

The First Cemetery is extraordinary for the simple fact that it preserves and also recreates a community. Granted, most of the people in that fenced-off section were of the same social class, almost all were foreigners, and all were non-Orthodox (mostly Protestant and Catholic) - they were already bound to run in the same circles. But a large percentage were part of an intellectual family tree, a community with connections across nationalities and zig-zagging relationships down through decade after decade. They're all there together under the shady pine trees. Young archaeologists can visit the First Cemetery and literally see their social and academic ancestry there before them. Name after name is instantly recognizable and meaningful. It occurs to me that nowhere else in the world will I ever know so many names of the dead in one place, in one cemetery. Nowhere else will I have so many connections to so many headstones.

What an odd and uncanny thing!