Cleo Rickman Fitch (June 16, 1910 – January 15, 1995) was an American archaeological researcher who specialized in Roman lamps.

Early life and education

Cleo Rickman Fitch was born on June 16, 1910, in Carlsbad, Texas. Her father was a doctor for Southern Pacific Railroad. While living in Carlsbad, he diagnosed himself with incurable diabetes and moved the family moved back to his hometown of

Chapel Hill, Tennessee Chapel Hill is a town in northeastern Marshall County, Tennessee, United States. The town was named after Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by settlers from that area. The population was 1,717 as of the 2020 census. Geography Chapel Hill is located at ...

. Soon after arriving in Tennessee, Fitch's father died and her mother supported the family by teaching school. Fitch obtained her bachelor's degree at Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, studying art and art history. She continued her art education at Watkins Institute of Art in Nashville. She married the architect

James Marston Fitch James Marston Fitch (1909–2000) was an architect and a Preservationist. In 1964, he was one of the founders of the Historic Preservation Program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He was a member ...

in 1936. In 1945, the couple moved to New York City, where James Fitch took a teaching job at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. During World War II, Fitch worked for the Army as an industrial draftsman. From 1953 to 1954, Cleo and James Fitch spent a year in Italy. While James Fitch studied architecture, Cleo studied art and sculpture.

Archaeological career

During their year abroad, Frank Brown, Director of the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

, invited Fitch to join his expedition at the ancient town of

Cosa Cosa was a Latin colony founded in southwestern Tuscany in 273 BC, on land confiscated from the Etruscans, to solidify the control of the Romans and offer the Republic a protected port. The Etruscan site (called ''Cusi'' or ''Cosia'') may have b ...

, north of Rome. Fitch was assigned the task of cataloging the excavation materials, which included many terracotta lamps. With her drafting skills, she was also given the responsibility of putting together the building plans for the new museum that Brown, representing the American Academy at Rome, was having built at Cosa Each summer for the following 21 years, Fitch made Rome her home and continued her work at the American Academy, reconstructing, drawing and cataloguing the lamp fragments from the Costa excavation site. "From the over-view of all of the lamps from the c. 700 years of the history of the site, it is possible to see the entire history of the Roman lamp industry." In 1979,

Norma Goldman Norma Wynick Goldman (March 30, 1922 – October 1, 2011) was an American classics scholar, author, professor at Wayne State University, and president of the Detroit Classical Association. Her works include textbooks of the Latin language as well a ...

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...

joined Fitch in her work. Their collaborative effort resulted in the publication of ''Cosa: The Lamps'' in 1994, part of the American Academy Series published by the University of Michigan Press. An edited volume of Cosa-related studies was produced in her honor in 2001. Fitch died January 5, 1995, in Manhattan, New York.

Selected bibliography

* ''Cosa: The Lamps'' (Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome), 1994, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press (co-authored with Norma Wynick Goldman)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitch, Cleo Rickman 1910 births 1995 deaths 20th-century American archaeologists American women archaeologists Classical archaeologists 20th-century women writers 20th-century American women