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Considering a Woman in Greek “Big Dig” Archaeology: Mary Wyckoff (1906-1932) at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Envisager une femme dans l’archéologie grecque des « grandes fouilles » : Mary Wyckoff (1906-1932) à l'American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Nina Clercq (de) 
p. 201-223

Résumés

Le présent article cherche à historiciser les mécanismes particuliers qui ont ouvert aux femmes l’accès à une carrière dans les sciences archéologiques. Pour ce faire, nous proposons un cas d’étude, celui de Mary Wyckoff (1906-1932), nommée en 1929 par l’American School of Classical Studies at Athens pour illustrer le matériel issu des fouilles de l’agora antique d’Athènes. Nous cherchons à éclaircir le paradoxe qui émerge entre, d’une part, le constat de l’exclusion historique des femmes des métiers scientifiques, et de l’autre, la multiplication des biographies de femmes dans les sciences.

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Notes de l’auteur

This work was funded as part of a doctoral contract issued by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI). I thank my laboratory “Sciences, Philosophie et Humanités” (SPH) and my graduate school “Sciences et Environements” (ED 304) of the University Bordeaux-Montaigne and the University of Bordeaux, for their financial and administrative support.

Texte intégral

I would like to thank the staff of the Corinth Excavations for their generous hospitality: Director Christopher Pfaff, for allowing me to work with the American School’s archives in Corinth, Associate Director Ioulia Tzonou, James A. Herbst and Manolis Papadakis for guiding me through the vast Corinthian heritage. My thanks also go to Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, Director of the Archives of the American School at Athens, and to Elefteria Daleziou, Leda Costaki and Alexis Malliaris for their kind assistance. I thank Eric Pumroy, the now recently retired Director of the Special Collections at Bryn Mawr College, and Jessica Bright, without whom many unpublished documents would have remained inaccessible.

1The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) was founded in 1881, following the example of the École Française d’Athènes (EFA) and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Athen (DAIA), founded respectively in 1846 and 1872. The ASCSA’s mission was to establish an American institution in Greece, under the auspices and funding of some of the leading American Colleges, to send professors and students there for the in situ study of antiquities and ultimately to undertake their own excavation projects (Archaeological Institute of America, 1886, p. 4). Its 48th annual report documents the activities conducted by the ASCSA for the academic year 1928-1929 (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1942). These annual reports are, in fact, a compilation of various separate reports, drawn up by the relevant sections of the organisation, and presented at their annual May Meeting. Of particular interest here is Edward Capps’ speech in his capacity as Chairman of the Managing Committee at the meeting of May 11, 1929. He reports on the progress of their new excavation project in the ancient agora of Athens which, caught between personal ambitions and political tensions, is struggling to get off the ground (Sakka, 2008; Hamilakis, 2013). It is within this context that we find the first mention of Mary Wyckoff:

He reported that a Commission to have control of the excavation of the Agora had been appointed […] the Commission had proposed that Dr. R. Carpenter, Director of the School, be made General Director of the excavations and Dr. T. L. Shear, Field Director; that an artist-photographer be appointed at the expense of the Agora Commission, in the person of Miss Wyckoff of Bryn Mawr […]. (ASCSA, 1942, p. 13)

  • 1  The ancient Greek agora of Athens is located underneath the popular neighbourhood in the modern ci (...)

2While the legislation that will transform the residential area of Vrysaki into an archaeological zone is still being debated by the Greek government, the ASCSA is already institutionally organised in anticipation of these uncertain excavations.1 A commission is created, members are appointed, and statutes are defined. The first step of this commission is to nominate three collaborators to carry out the excavations in the Agora and to release the necessary funds for this purpose. The power granted to this Agora Commission is de facto executive. Mary Wyckoff of Bryn Mawr College was, on this occasion, appointed “artist-photographer” of the Agora excavations.

3In this paper we seek to understand the impact of gender on the conditions that collectively enabled Mary Wyckoff to enter the circles of American archaeology in Greece. We will not study her actual work within archaeology, but focus our attention to what happens upstream. We will therefore focus on identifying the circumstances that made it possible for Mary Wyckoff, as a woman, to assume a role in the field of archaeological sciences. These situations are inevitably particular and above all historically embedded, and it is through them that women’s room to manoeuvre within science is expanded. Thus, instead of focusing on the mechanisms of exclusion, we seek to highlight the processes involved in the inclusion of women in science, as evidenced by the contemporary proliferation of biographies of women in science. With this case study, we thus address the current contradiction between the historical exclusion of women from science on the one hand, and the proliferation of their biographies on the other.

1.  Contemporary Views on Women in Archaeology

4There are today many biographies of women who have made a career in the field of archaeological sciences. This interest seems to originate from the rise of feminist archaeology after the publication, in 1984, of the article “Archaeology and the study of gender” by Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory (Conkey & Spector, 1984). This article introduced a revisionist perspective into the practice of archaeology that now largely defines the way archaeologists write the history of their own discipline. This approach to history has its own objectives and is legitimate for its own purposes. Nevertheless, it is different from those pursued by historians of science.

  • 2  For example, Excavating Women: A History of Women in European Archaeology (Díaz-Andreu & Stig Søre (...)

5In rediscovering the forgotten women of archaeology, the history of archaeology as it is written by archaeologists, ultimately seeks to improve the current conditions for women in the discipline and to suggest what a better future of the discipline should look like. Since the publication of Claassen’s Women in Archaeology in 1994, this biographical genre and ideological orientation has become more and more common in archaeological literature.2

6Historians of science have also addressed the issue of gender, as shown by the recent publication in this very journal of a volume entitled Une histoire genrée des savoirs est-elle possible ? (Burgos-Blondelle & al., 2021) to which we refer to for an overview of the question and the literature. The shift in recent decades from the study of the content of scientific knowledge to the study of its production, from theories to practices, is not observed in the existing literature on the history of women in classical archaeology. This is because these two disciplinary trends have not yet converged. That is to say, on the one hand, archaeologists have not taken on the methods, objectives and discussions which guide the practice of writing a gendered history of knowledge as developed by historians of science and, on the other hand, historians of science have not yet dealt with the subjects of the history of classical archaeology. In regard to the history of women within the ASCSA in particular, the current state of literature provides us with an internalist history of heroines, feeding the myth of pioneers which has been identified as problematic by historians of science (Fauvel & al., 2020). These existing narratives refer only to the long careers of powerful personalities. Their archives acquired a patrimonial status which guaranteed their own physical preservation and the remembrance of their authors. This view on the history of archaeology selects only its most exemplary individuals, and if Mary Wyckoff has remained an invisible woman, it is because the questions raised by archaeologists on the history of their own discipline have failed to bring her back to the surface. In order to ‘find’ Mary Wyckoff, we must shed the glorifying purpose that often characterises the work of archaeologists when writting about women archaeologists of the past.

  • 3  Dorothy Burr on Mary Wyckoff Simpkin following the news of her passing. Bryn Mawr College, Special (...)

7No personal records of Mary Wyckoff are known and the few fragments of her “strange little life”3 appear to us as only a timid parenthesis within the institutional history of the ASCSA. It is therefore difficult to claim this article to be a full biographical undertaking. However, we will use the biographical dimension to guide our discussion in the tradition of “biography as cultural history of science” (Terral, 2006). By retracing Mary Wyckoff’s steps as closely as possible, we aim to understand how American archaeology in Greece functioned; especially in its conception of women’s work, when it was defined by the “great excavation” model.

2.  Shaping American Girls

8Mary Wyckoff, later Mary Simpkin, was born on the 12th of July 1906 in Glastonbury, Connecticut. She is the third daughter of Herbert James Wyckoff and Lillian Emily Wheeler. She has two older sisters, Dorothy born in 1900 and Lillian born in 1902. Her formative years evolved around two geographic centres, chosen for the educational opportunities they offered the three daughters of the Wyckoff family.

2.1.  Bryn Mawr College

9The first of these centres was Bryn Mawr College (BMC), a women’s college in West Philadelphia. Its appeal became apparent when the entire Wyckoff family moved there when the eldest daughters successfully passed their entrance exams to the college; Dorothy in 1917 and Lillian the following year. In 1918, the whole family left their home at 59 Church Street in Norwich for Pennsylvania, where they settled just a few miles away from BMC at 833 Summit Grove Avenue. The father left a well-established social environment –he gave up both his ministry with the Second Congregational Church and the Boy Scouts, whose local troop he had founded– to work as a teacher at the Haverford School for Boys. Mary was enrolled at the Baldwin School for Girls, a private school that would prepare her for the rigorous BMC entrance examinations. Despite the proximity of the new parental home to the university campus, the girls were placed in residence at BMC. That they are removed from the family economics suggests that education was a priority for the family.

  • 4  Mary’s two older sisters attended Norwich Free Academy before the family moved to Pennsylvania.

10By successively enrolling their daughters in private schools, the Wyckoffs pictured a higher education for them from an early age.4 However, this required a significant financial investment. That this took a heavy toll on the parents’ finances is made clear through their success in securing various forms of external funding. Dorothy and Lillian indeed received various scholarships, based on both academic merit and financial needs, which enabled them to pursue their studies. For instance, Dorothy and Lillian were successively appointed Bryn Mawr Matriculation Scholar for the New England States based on “the sum total of marks obtained by the candidate” (Bryn Mawr College, 1918, p. 218). Dorothy was then able to finance her four years of undergraduate studies with the financial assistance of the Frances Marion Simpson Scholarship, a competitive scholarship for those “unable or whose parents are unable to pay the fees” (p. 216). Lillian also received this scholarship for a year, after which she was awarded the James E. Rhoads Scholarship, given to those who show “a high degree of excellence in their work” and can “prove their need of financial assistance” (Bryn Mawr College, 1919, p. 209). Lillian’s final year of undergraduate studies was financed by the Anna Powers Memorial Scholarship “offered to members of the senior class in need of financial assistance” (Bryn Mawr College, 1921, p. 211).

11After obtaining their Bachelor of Arts degree (B.A.), Mary’s sisters pursued graduate studies at BMC with which they both specialised in a branch of the so-called “laboratory sciences”, alternating their studies with teaching work. Dorothy received her B.A. in 1921 with majors in Latin and Greek. She then enrolled in a graduate program in chemistry and geology but dropped out at the end of the academic year to teach Latin at the Miss Kirks’ School. Alongside her teaching, she continued to attend the BMC, where she took Susan Ballou’s course “Latin Prose Composition” which was aimed particularly at those women aspiring to teach (Bryn Mawr College, 1923, p. 61). Lillian was also working as a teacher at the Collegiate School in Louisville. So by the time Mary got into BMC in the autumn of 1923, her two older sisters and her father were all teaching in primary and preparatory schools.

  • 5  Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Dorothy Burr Thompson Papers and Diaries, Box 4, Folder 4: (...)
  • 6  Ibid., 26 November 1923.

12During Mary’s first academic year in 1923-24, her sister Dorothy maintained a regular correspondence with her friend Dorothy Burr, a Bryn Mawr graduate in classical archaeology and Greek who was spending an academic year in Greece with the ASCSA as the European Fellow. Dorothy Wyckoff’s letters were saved by Dorothy Burr and are now held by the Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. Dorothy Wyckoff’s part of the correspondence gives us a glimpse into Mary’s university life. Mary took Florence Bascom’s geology classes: “my beloved Miss Bascom who is once more in her rightful domain, instructing a huge Minor Geology Class of which (whom?) my young sister Mary is one!”5 and Mary Hamilton Swindler’s Latin class: “She is in Miss Swindler’s Tarence course, so that Lady invited us both to tea – and then told us all about herself, her writings, her financial affairs, and her toothaches.”6

Figure 1 - The only known portrait of Mary Wyckoff, taken on Campus

Figure 1 - The only known portrait of Mary Wyckoff, taken on Campus

Source: Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Yearbook Class of 1927

13For Mary, the pursuit of a higher education appears to be arduous. Firstly, unlike her sisters, she did not receive a series of merit-based scholarships as she was only awarded the Mary Anna Longstreth Memorial Scholarship, which covered the tuition costs for her second year, in 1924-1925. That she appears to have been less successful academically than her sisters is also reflected in their respective yearbooks. Dorothy and Lillian both graduated with honours, whereas Mary does not appear on the honours page of her own yearbook (Bryn Mawr College, 1927). It appears that Mary was due to graduate in 1927 but, for unknown reasons, it was not until February 1928 that she, in turn, earned her B.A. In the autumn of 1928, Mary started graduate work in archaeology which was interrupted by her nomination as artist-photographer for the ASCSA in the spring of 1929.

2.2.  Camp Big Pine at Lake Fairlee

  • 7  Ibid., 2 September 1923.

14The aforementioned correspondance also allows us to reconstruct bits and pieces of the other centre that characterized her early years in Vermont. Late in the summer of 1923, Mary’s sister Dorothy writes to her friend: “But now, at last, Camp is over; and everyone – girls, counsellors, cooks, laundress and ‘handy-man’ –departed. There remain only ‘us’ –i.e. the Wyckoff family.”7 She refers to the approaching end of the season at Camp Big Pine, a summer camp for girls established in 1914 by her parents on the shores of Lake Fairlee in Vermont. Though the camp was bought by Songadeewin Incorporated in 1925 and its name changed to Beenadeewin Wigwam, her parents remained its directors. Judging by the listed staff, it was a rather small business. The Wyckoff parents were involved in what was then a widespread trend across the United States: summer camps in general and girls’ summer camps in particular (Paris, 2001). First and foremost, owning and operating a private summer camp provided the family with an additional source of income when the schools in which the father and two older daughters were employed closed for the summer holidays. The top end of these summer camps cost up to $400 for two months, while there were also public alternatives for working class families at $15 for a fortnight (Paris, 2001, p. 57). The Wyckoffs charged $300 per season and were thus within the more exclusive market segment (Camp Big Pine, 1923).

15To fully appreciate the significance of the Wyckoffs’ summer camp, beyond its financial benefits, one must consider the spiritual and professional background of the father, Herbert James Wyckoff. He obtained a Bachelor of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1898, after which he served as a minister at the Second Congregational Church between 1897 and 1918. His father had also been a reverend and his sisters were also involved in the Church. Helen Grace and Ellen Gertrude, known as the “Wyckoff twins”, were missionaries for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Pang Chuang, China, between 1887 and 1927. Herbert James was also involved in bringing the Boy Scouts to America as he founded the one of the first troops in Norwich. This experience is likely to have been a source of inspiration for the opening of his own summer camp.

16These summer camps provided a range of outdoor activities. To Mary, her parents’ summer camp appears to have been primarily an athletic opportunity as she specialised in supervising water activities. In 1924, she graduated at the Swimming and Canoe Conference held at Camp Quiinibeck at Fairlee Lake, where she was representing her parents’ camp (Peale, 1930, p. 28). At BMC, Mary Wyckoff was part of the swimming club: she was on the team that won the 1924-1925 Swim Meet. In her yearbook this is the only section in which she is highlighted (Bryn Mawr College, 1927, p. 56).

17Through the correspondence between Dorothy Wyckoff and her friend Dorothy Burr, we get a sense of what summers at Camp Big Pine might have been like. However, just as the philosophies underlying the summer camps may vary between its founders, so does the experience vary among its participants. For Mary’s sister, it was the natural setting of camp, with its marshes, bogs and pine forests, that provided her with the opportunity to explore and develop her identity as a naturalist and her passion for the natural world, ranging from botany to ornithology. The area surrounding Lake Fairlee is thus transformed by her into a naturalist’s playground. During her summers at the camp, she also participated in a survey set up by the Ministry of Agriculture for which she banded birds and took photographs in the field. Her experience is concisely summarised in this passage from her correspondence:

  • 8  Ibid., 7 July 1924.

I am amusing myself entirely with Natural History. I’ve been taking pictures of birds’ nests lately, and poking about in swamps with a dip net and a pair of rubber boots; and keeping an ever increasing “zoo” which will soon number a specimen of every local species of reptile and amphibian.8

2.3.  Sisterhood

18Summer camps are primarily designed for their educational opportunities and their “potential to help children develop” (Smith, 2006, p. 72). Mary herself takes on such a role as she supervises canoeing activities. Specific knowledge is thus imparted in a formal setting. However, the summer camp is also a place where knowledge is passed on in a more informal way. In our case, this dynamic can be observed within the Wyckoff family, specifically between Mary and her older sister Dorothy. Unfortunately, the lack of archives prevents us from accessing Mary’s first-person account. Nevertheless, Dorothy’s correspondence provides a vivid portrayal of their relationship. Camp Big Pine is also seen in this correspondence as an ideal setting for the informal transmission of knowledge between the Wyckoff sisters. What is more, Mary’s special relationship with her older sister seems to have oriented her towards the practice of illustration. From her correspondence with Dorothy Burr, we know that Dorothy Wyckoff regularly practised painting and her fondness for drawing is evident in her letters. Her letters regularly included drawings in black ink. Dorothy Wyckoff’s ambition to attend an art school begins to take shape within the winter of 1923. In the spring of 1924, she leaves her job as Latin teacher to go to New York:

  • 9  Ibid., s.d.

I’ve resigned from school, and broken the news to my family: everybody was lovely, –you can’t think what a relief. And it’s almost entirely settled (barring the totally unexpected) that I shall be in New York next winter studying at the Art Students’ League.9

19In the spring of 1925, she summarises to her friend all she had learned and provides us thereby with access to the content of her courses:

  • 10  Ibid., 10 November 1925.

I am working very hard at the Art Students’ League –Drawing from the cast and from the model– studying anatomy and perspective, doing a weekly “composition” for class’ criticism –besides running around to various galleries, exploring the realm of History of Art, sketching at the zoo or the Museum of Natural History.10

  • 11  Ibid., Folder 6: Dorothy Wyckoff to Dorothy Burr, 14 May 1927.

20Before finishing her first year, Dorothy Wyckoff left the Art Students’ League, but she did stay long enough to learn the basics of perspective and drawing. Two years later, in the summer of 1927, Mary joined her in Vermont to learn these same drawing techniques from her: “[Mary] is going with me [to camp], to learn to draw still life and perspective!”11 It was thus her older sister Dorothy who taught her the techniques of illustration in the summer of 1927. Dorothy Wyckoff also practised photography and it is likely that it was she who taught Mary the basics of the Kodak. It is noteworthy that a major part of the education necessary for her appointment as an artist-photographer was not institutional. Instead it was intra-familial and it was places like the summer camp that made this transferral of knowledge possible.

21In her correspondence with Dorothy Burr, Dorothy Wyckoff makes an interesting comparison between her experience of summer camp in Vermont and Burr’s archaeological fieldwork in Greece:

  • 12  Ibid., Folder 4: Dorothy Wyckoff to Dorothy Burr, 2 September 1924.

And being out-of-doors, and often alone, I have rediscovered the loves of my childhood, which were forgotten in my love for books during the years when you knew me best. So I have been forgetting my Greek, while you have been perfecting yours; and while you have been learning to read German I have been learning to read bird. Tracks; while you have been counting bits of mosaic and naming potsherds, I have been counting the trees of the wood and naming the stars of heaven. I could live a long time without any books, if I had a marsh to explore. You would travel far to see the ruins of a temple, with the same eagerness I would go to the shore to see the migrating birds come or go.12

22This elder sister was awarded a coveted European Fellowship to study a year abroad. She was the Fanny Bullock Workman Fellow for the year 1928-1929 and travelled to Norway after taking her exams for her Masters in Geology. While Dorothy was away in Oslo, Mary entered the Archaeology Department of BMC for Graduate Studies. This is the same Department in which Dorothy Burr was enrolled. Dorothy Burr had undertaken the journey to Greece as European Fellow a few years back. In 1923 she was awarded the prestigious position of European Fellow of Bryn Mawr, which provided funding for study abroad. Dorothy Burr opted for the ASCSA in Greece. Given the relationship between Mary and her older sister, between the latter and Dorothy Burr, but also Mary’s direct correspondence with Dorothy Burr’s younger sister Pamela, it is very likely that Mary was personnaly aware of Dorothy Burr’s experiences in Greece within the ASCSA. It is therefore tempting to see Burr as a model for Mary, or, at least, as the embodiment of a possibility.

23Thus, to Mary Wyckoff, being a woman in a field science, the journey to Europe, a career, all belonged to the world of possibilities and were even encouraged by her family, existing institutions and fellowships. However, having a set of ideas and even ideals available that open up the imagination is one thing. For integration to become reality, the possibility for a woman to work on an excavation project has to be recognized by the established structures that control access to the American archaeological community in Greece.

3.  Emerging Opportunities

24To understand how Mary Wyckoff came to be an artist-photographer within the ASCSA, we also need to establish the particular needs of the institution at the time of her appointment; to understand how the institution saw Mary Wyckoff as an opportunity to fill a particular need. We will ask ourselves what role gender conceptions played at this stage.

3.1.  Corinthian Needs, Athenian Money

25At the time Mary began her graduate studies at the BMC Archaeology Department, there were ongoing discussions at the ASCSA regarding the new excavation project of the Athenian Agora. Funding for this project had already been secured through J.D. Rockefeller, but the execution of the project was still struggling to get off the ground as the Greek state and the ASCSA had not yet come to an agreement (Sakka, 2008). It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of 1929, it was still unclear whether the money promised by Rockefeller would ever be used as evidenced by the correspondence of Capps, the Chairman of the ASCSA’s Managing Committee. On the 10th of January 1929, Capps presented the new director of the ASCSA, Rhys Carpenter, then in Athens, with an ingenious arrangement that would allow the ASCSA to release money from the Agora fund before the excavations at the Agora were actually secured.

  • 13  On this matter see: Lord (1947, p. 191-192), Davis & Gorogianni (2005, p. 96-100), Robinson (2011, (...)

26In addition to the Agora project, Capps had other goals to achieve. Since his appointment as chairman of the ASCSA’s Managing Committee in 1919, he had been determined to ensure the publication of the results of the excavations at Corinth, where the ASCSA had been operating since 1896. Capps’ fervent dedication to this end had even caused the downfall, a few years earlier, of the ASCSA’s director, Bert Hodge Hill, when he failed to publish his.13 To fully grasp Capps’ motivation for the publications, we believe it is essential to consider not only his scientific motivations, but also his promotional tactics. Indeed, the ASCSA depends on private contributions, and to ensure its functioning it is necessary to collect donations and therefore to constantly renew the interest in its activities. In this respect, Capps sees the publication as a valuable tool to justify the importance of the Corinthian site to the academic community, but also as a means to attract wealthy potential donors.

27Capps therefore devised a clever plan to use Rockefeller’s money, intended for the Agora project, for the site of Corinth. To this end, he introduced the Corinthian site as a training ground for the future archaeologists of the future Agora excavations. It is necessary to fully comprehend this in order to understand the very existence of the Agora Commission that elected Mary Wyckoff as artist-photographer. Capps himself created this Commission in 1929, a commission to which he granted executive powers and in which he offered himself as chairman. The very first action of this commission was to justify the creation of fellowships with the Agora money, labelled as “special fellowships”. The Rockfeller money for the Agora was thereby used to finance the ASCSA’s activities on the Corinthian site. By presenting the Corinthian site as a training ground for the Agora, Capps succeeded in releasing resources to increase the workforce for the completion of the work in Corinth.

  • 14  The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Administrative Records, Box 318/2, Folder 1: E (...)

Special Fellowships for the Agora undertaking to be applied in a particular way. I proposed that we on this side select, with your help so far as you could give it, two men in each of the next two years who shall be given one year of training in excavation at Corinth or elsewhere, and then, if they prove to be promising men for this kind of work, that they be retained for two years longer; the stipend being $1500, for the first year, and for the second and third, $1800 and $2000 respectively […] If we get the Fellowships, the appointees will be called, I suppose, Special School Fellows, unless we can think of a better designation.14

28Capps explains why it is necessary to not only train promising men for future excavations but also how he intends to set up this training and with what money. In this letter he also mentions Mary Wyckoff for the first time:

  • 15  Ibid.

Miss Wyckoff of Bryn Mawr has been very highly recommended for just this sort of thing. She is related to A.L. Wheeler, who had her come up to talk to me and show me a lot of her work which seems to be very good indeed.15

29The simultaneous announcement of the new artist-photographer position and its offer to Mary Wyckoff suggests that the position was indeed created specifically for her. In fact, as it was never open to competition, she did not have to apply for the position. What seems to be decisive in the distribution of positions are the personal connections. As this letter clearly shows, it was through the man we were able to identify as her uncle, Arthur Leslie Wheeler, that Wyckoff was introduced into the ASCSA networks. And although we can only guess why he introduced his niece’s work to Capps, Wheeler seems to have understood that it was Capps who possessed real influence within the ASCSA organisation when he approached him.

30On the 30th of January 1929, the Trustees officially created Capps’ Agora Commission and its first meeting was held on the 18th of February 1929. At that meeting Mary Wyckoff was elected to the position of artist-photographer even though her role had already been agreed upon before this first meeting:

  • 16  Ibid., 7 February 1929.

I now come to the matter of the artist-photographer. I think I have mentioned before that, through Wheeler, we have learned about Miss Wyckoff, one of your old students. I had her come up here with her drawings, which Shear and I went over with her and Shear is convinced that she has a good deal of capacity. […] Miss Wyckoff will be available and ready to sail about the middle of April and I am planning, after I have consulted the Agora Commission, to have her come up for a consultation and, if everybody agrees, for appointment.16

31The Agora Commission meeting thus appears more as a formality than a real decisive body. In a way, it appears as a democratic-looking legitimation for Capps’ rather autocratic powers. Wyckoff’s appointment was thus also, and perhaps above all, a way for Capps to bring to completion his mission of getting the publications on Corinth out. Archaeological publications require illustration for both scientific and aesthetic reasons. That Mary Wyckoff’s presence in Corinth went beyond the training needs of the Agora excavations becomes clear in this particular passage:

  • 17  Ibid.

We need such a person constantly at Corinth, of course, both for the old material and for the current work and are going to need one constantly in connection with the Agora excavation. […] I will have her understand that she is expected, if you so wish it, to stay on the job during the summer, preparing the material at Corinth for publication.17

3.2.  “Perhaps a Woman”

  • 18  An overview of Piet de Jong’s work for the ASCSA can be found in Papadopoulos (2007).

32If we want to understand how Mary Wyckoff was chosen in the first place, we should focus on Capps’ and not the Commission’s criteria. Clearly, Mary Wyckoff benefited from this situation in which Capps’ main concern was to publish the Corinthian site. However, this still fails to fully explain the reason for creating a position for Mary Wyckoff in particular, when the illustrations had so far been done by Piet de Jong in a very satisfactory manner.18 In the following extract from his letter to Carpenter dated the 7th of February 1929, Capps partly discloses his motives:

  • 19  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Administrative Records, Box 318/2, Folder 1: Edwar (...)

We all want the final publication of Corinth of course to be not only as good as possible, but also to represent American scholarship down to the last detail. From this point of view also it would seem to me desirable, and I think most likely to you also, that our plans of the excavations and plans of the buildings, reconstructions etc., should be signed by our own architectural staff rather than by anybody, no matter how competent, who could be called in and paid for doing this work. I should say the same thing, too, of the artistic reproductions of every kind, it would be gratifying to have our own artist and our own photographer if it can be achieved.19

  • 20  With the exception of the Americans, the various foreign schools established in Athens already had (...)

33On the 7th of February, Capps knows that this is in fact achievable, and that Mary Wyckoff is the one who can make it happen. At this point, Capps also expresses his desire to increase the prestige of the ASCSA through the Corinthian publications by having the illustrations done by their own artist-photographer. This allows for the display of American excellence in scholarship at a time of competition between the various foreign schools then established in Greece.20 Other illustrators available and used previously were Piet de Jong who was British and associated mainly with the British School, and Herman Wagner, the German photographer of the German School. Although for Capps men are generally speaking better suited for the excavation projects in Greece, the role of illustrator could be filled by a woman:

  • 21  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Administrative Records, Box 318/2, Folder 1: Edwar (...)

Generally speaking, I suppose they ought to be men though perhaps a woman for special work should also be taken into consideration. For instance, a woman who is gifted as Mrs. Shear was in archaeological drawing and painting would be a very valuable person to have around.21

34Carpenter also considers certain archaeological tasks to be particularly suited to women. He had recently located in Corinth what he thought to be the ancient city’s potters’ district and wrote about the material to be retrieved:

  • 22  Ibid., Rhys Carpenter to Edward Capps, 3 February 1929.

These [about 20,000 sherds] will then be classified according to type of design and, in spite of their fragmentary condition, should give an extraordinarily complete survey of the Corinthian potters’ industry. […] Miss Newhall is admirably fitted to do this work of comparison and collation.22

  • 23  Ibid.
  • 24  Ibid., Edward Capps to Rhys Carpenter, 22 February 1929.

35The above seems to confirm existing theories about the history of women in archaeology which suggest that when women are involved in archaeological work, it is in occupations considered feminine (Claassen, 1994). Indeed, it is worth noting that for Capps, archaeological fieldwork always involves a man, and it is only in the field of illustration that he considers a woman practitioner. This association between gender and the nature of the work is consistent in Capps’ correspondence at the ASCSA. However, for Carpenter it was not only a question of assigning Miss Newhall to study the material from the potters’ district, but also of giving her the direction of the excavations on this new site: “I dare say that a short campaign (for which I shall give Miss Newhall the responsibility during March) will yield about 20,000 sherds.”23 In his reply, Capps does not recall the actual excavation task to which Carpenter intends to assign to Newhall, but only: “[I am glad that] Miss Newhall is such a good person to make the studies which will follow the excavations.”24

  • 25  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Excavations, Notebook 103; Notebook 104.
  • 26  Ibid., Notebook 106-bis.
  • 27  Ibid., Notebook 97.

36It is useful to briefly recall here how fieldwork tasks were distributed in interwar Greek archaeology. On an excavation site one would find: a supervisor, a foreman and a team of workers. It is the position of supervisor only that is considered for the Americans. In this respect, one should not imagine the archetypal pioneering woman holding a pick, but rather her standing at the edge of a pit and taking notes. The actual digging, in terms of physical labour, is done by the workers and their foreman. At the site of Corinth, where several projects were being carried out simultaneously in 1929, there were two American in supervisory positions: Mary Zelia Pease, who was in charge of the sector “North of Peribolos of Apollo”25, and Agnes Ellen Newhall, who, prior to being in charge of the newly discovered “Potter’s quarter”26, had been in charge of the excavations of the “Hellenistic Villa”27 since 1928.

  • 28  Theodore L. Shear, in his capacity as Director of the Agora excavations, personally supports Dorot (...)

37Although the position of these women within archaeological work is worthy of an in-depth analysis (especially the dynamics between them and their male counterparts on and off the site), we shall be satisfied here with noting that their presence on archaeological projects and in the field is an established fact. Capps’ conception of an excavation as being necessarily masculine therefore fails to reflect the reality on the ground at Corinth. Both Rhys Carpenter and Theodore Leslie Shear, who were conducting their own excavations at Corinth concurrently, validate the presence of women in fieldwork, including in supervisory roles.28 There appears thus to be a discrepancy between ideas on gender, as expressed in Capps’ letters, and the reality on the ground.

  • 29  See for example Luce (1930), Broneer (1930, p. 210).
  • 30  These are in part conserved at the dig house of the ASCSA’s Corinth Excavations in the village of (...)

38In the spring of 1929, Mary Wyckoff sailed from the United States to Greece, where she was promptly dispatched to the village of Ancient Corinth to assist in the ASCSA excavations under the orders of first Carpenter and later Shear. For the subsequent two years, she devoted herself exclusively to Corinthian material, receiving remuneration from the Agora Fund. She drew older finds with black ink drawings for their long-awaited publication, alongside photographing the ongoing excavations with a large plate camera.29 She illustrated Shear’s personal excavations with life sized watercolor paintings depicting the latest discoveries from the sites of Cheliotomylos, the Northern Cemetery, and the Roman Chamber Tomb.30

  • 31 Bryn Mawr College, Special Collections, Dorothy Burr Thompson Papers and Diaries, vol. 23, 19 Janua (...)

39Towards the end of May 1931, the excavations of the Ancient Agora of Athens finally began, and Mary departed Corinth for Athens, where she took on the position of artist-photographer until the first half of the following year. In January 1932 she had recently married Charles Howard Simpkin, an electricity contractor who collaborated with architect W. Stuart Thompson on the construction of new buildings for the American School. Together they took up residence at the base of Lykabettus hill, close to the compound of the School in the Kolonaki neighbourhood, in a house described as a “queer affair built by an artist with a toilet in every room” by Dorothy Burr.31 That same year, on her return journey from a trip to Turkey where her husband was involved in the electrical works of a new hospital, she fell seriously ill and had to disembark in Canada. She was admitted to the Jeffrey Hale Memorial Hospital in Quebec where she passed away on September 12, 1932 (Bryn Mawr, 1932, p. 33).

4.  Conclusions

40In the first half of the 20th century, the United States provided opportunities for girls to shape themselves into the image of the New Woman; the independent, self-reliant, educated and athletic character that emerged first as a literary character in the late nineteenth century. The Wyckoffs, infused with Protestant ethics, attached great importance to the education of their daughters and made it a priority in their lives. Mary Wyckoff’s early years were thus defined by her access to the sex segregated spaces of Bryn Mawr College and Camp Big Pine. These places provided Mary Wyckoff with a safe homosocial world among sisters and peers, conducive to both formal and informal knowledge transmissions. Although Mary Wyckoff’s family relationships blurred the formality invested by these institutions, they enabled Mary to enter the professional archaeological community. We discovered that institutional and private networks are in fact inseparable. These places provide a stage that individuals can use, circumvent and exploit in their own way, and sometimes only to simulate legitimacy. In Mary Wyckoff’s case, family relationships outweighed her academic qualifications. To enter the circles of classical archaeology, Mary Wyckoff took a circuitous route which reveals the effectiveness of the networks in place within the Classics, networks which, although international, were ultimately very narrow.

41During the interwar period, the idea of a woman working in the archaeological sciences is part of the realms of possibility, especially when it comes to the auxiliary tasks associated with fieldwork, such as illustration or the study of artefacts. However, the study of Mary Wyckoff’s case reminds us to refrain from the temptation of turning the lives of historical individuals into general historical laws. We have found a discrepancy between the views of those in charge in the United States and the actual state of affairs on the ground in Greece. Thus, while it was perhaps more obvious in the United States to consider a woman working as an illustrator rather than as an excavator, the reality on the ground in Greece presents a different situation. A possible solution to the paradox that historians of science have observed between the historical exclusion of women and the proliferation of their biographies is perhaps to be found here, in the gap between the discourse on women and their actual participation in the production of knowledge as reflected in the archaeological archives. Indeed, our findings suggest that while archaeology may have been perceived and conceptualized as a masculine field, it did not exclude women. They were allowed to participate and take on various roles, whether these were traditionally considered feminine, such as illustration, or masculine, such as supervision. The paradox thereby appears to be historical in itself and as a consequence does not seem to need to be solved but to be observed and restituted as is.

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Notes

1  The ancient Greek agora of Athens is located underneath the popular neighbourhood in the modern city centre (Dumont, 2020).

2  For example, Excavating Women: A History of Women in European Archaeology (Díaz-Andreu & Stig Sørensen, 1998), Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists (Cohen & Joukowsky, 2004) and more recently Cultural Negotiations: The Role of Women in the Founding of Americanist Archaeology (Browman, 2013).

3  Dorothy Burr on Mary Wyckoff Simpkin following the news of her passing. Bryn Mawr College, Special Collections, Dorothy Burr Thompson Papers and Diaries, vol. 25, 25 September 1932.

4  Mary’s two older sisters attended Norwich Free Academy before the family moved to Pennsylvania.

5  Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Dorothy Burr Thompson Papers and Diaries, Box 4, Folder 4: Dorothy Wyckoff to Dorothy Burr, 19 October 1923.

6  Ibid., 26 November 1923.

7  Ibid., 2 September 1923.

8  Ibid., 7 July 1924.

9  Ibid., s.d.

10  Ibid., 10 November 1925.

11  Ibid., Folder 6: Dorothy Wyckoff to Dorothy Burr, 14 May 1927.

12  Ibid., Folder 4: Dorothy Wyckoff to Dorothy Burr, 2 September 1924.

13  On this matter see: Lord (1947, p. 191-192), Davis & Gorogianni (2005, p. 96-100), Robinson (2011, p. 99-100), Rupp (2013).

14  The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Administrative Records, Box 318/2, Folder 1: Edward Capps to Rhys Carpenter, 10 January 1929.

15  Ibid.

16  Ibid., 7 February 1929.

17  Ibid.

18  An overview of Piet de Jong’s work for the ASCSA can be found in Papadopoulos (2007).

19  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Administrative Records, Box 318/2, Folder 1: Edward Capps to Rhys Carpenter, 7 February 1929.

20  With the exception of the Americans, the various foreign schools established in Athens already had their own periodicals to disseminate their archaeological work. The Germans had the Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Institutes in Athen (1876), the French the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique (1877) and the British had their Annual of the British School at Athens (1885).

21  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Administrative Records, Box 318/2, Folder 1: Edward Capps to Rhys Carpenter, 10 January 1929.

22  Ibid., Rhys Carpenter to Edward Capps, 3 February 1929.

23  Ibid.

24  Ibid., Edward Capps to Rhys Carpenter, 22 February 1929.

25  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Excavations, Notebook 103; Notebook 104.

26  Ibid., Notebook 106-bis.

27  Ibid., Notebook 97.

28  Theodore L. Shear, in his capacity as Director of the Agora excavations, personally supports Dorothy Burr’s appointment as a Agora Fellow, see: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Homer Thompson Papers, Box 173, Folder 1: Theodore Leslie Shear to Edward Capps, 21 December 1929.

29  See for example Luce (1930), Broneer (1930, p. 210).

30  These are in part conserved at the dig house of the ASCSA’s Corinth Excavations in the village of Ancient Corinth but remain uncatalogued.

31 Bryn Mawr College, Special Collections, Dorothy Burr Thompson Papers and Diaries, vol. 23, 19 January 1932.

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Titre Figure 1 - The only known portrait of Mary Wyckoff, taken on Campus
Crédits Source: Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Yearbook Class of 1927
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Nina Clercq (de) , « Considering a Woman in Greek “Big Dig” Archaeology: Mary Wyckoff (1906-1932) at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens »Cahiers François Viète, III-15 | 2023, 201-223.

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Nina Clercq (de) , « Considering a Woman in Greek “Big Dig” Archaeology: Mary Wyckoff (1906-1932) at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens »Cahiers François Viète [En ligne], III-15 | 2023, mis en ligne le 01 novembre 2023, consulté le 08 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cahierscfv/4474 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cahierscfv.4474

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Nina Clercq (de) 

est doctorante en histoire des sciences au sein de l'unité mixte de recherche “Sciences, Philosophie, Humanités” (SPH), co-habilitée par l'université Bordeaux Montaigne et l'université de Bordeaux. Ses recherches portent sur l’histoire et l’historiographie des instituts étrangers d’archéologie en Grèce.

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