James Rivers Barrington Stewart (3 July 1913 – 6 February 1962) was a noted Australian archaeologist of

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...

and Ancient south-west Asia at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...

Early life and career

Stewart was born in Sydney and died at

Bathurst, New South Wales Bathurst () is a city in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. Bathurst is about 200 kilometres (120 mi) west-northwest of Sydney and is the seat of the Bathurst Regional Council. Bathurst is the oldest inland settlement in ...

and was a descendant of a line of Bathurst landed gentry. He spent much of his childhood in Europe attended secondary school in Australia and enrolled

The Leys School The Leys School is a co-educational independent school in Cambridge, England. It is a day and boarding school for about 574 pupils between the ages of eleven and eighteen, and a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. Histo ...

in Cambridge in 1930, at the age of 17, then attended Cambridge University the following year. His mother died in January 1932, leaving him £7000. He visited Bagdad, Damascus, Aleppo and Baalbeck on his way to England in 1932. He married Eleanor Neal in England on 1 July 1935 and the two travelled Australia for a visit. James won a Wilkins Fellowship, which he used for them both to travel to the Near East with a short stay in Cyprus. They arrived in Istanbul in January 1936, and they spent time digging and collecting.

War service and first marriage

Jim volunteered to join the British army in May 1940 and requested to be posted in Cyprus. Prior to leaving England for a short trip to Australia with Eleanor he left £300 for the publication of his work and bequeathed his massive personal library to the Cyprus Museum. He reported for duty at Haifa on 30 January 1941, but was captured by the end of the year and spent out the war as a German prisoner of war and after the war. After liberation by American troops he returned to England in April 1945.

Move to Australia and marriage

In 1947 Stewart made what was intended to be a two-week visit to Australia via Cyprus, but there met Dorothy Evelyn (Eve) Dray (born August 1914), who grew up in Cairo and shared his interest in Cyprus having made her first trip in 1926 then returned after completing her education in 1937. Stewart arranged for Eve to come to Australia as his ‘technical assistant’.

Academic career in Australia and second marriage

Stewart obtained a position at the Sydney University, where he lectured in the History department, at the Nicholson Museum, becoming the first person to teach archaeology at an Australian university. He lobbied for the establishment of a Department of Archaeology, which was created in 1948. Stewart divorced Eleanor and married Eve in 1951, and they moved to Mount Pleasant at Bathurst, where he had his own laboratory and library. Stewart was appointed Professor of Near Eastern Studies in 1960 but died just 18 months into his tenure on 6 February 1962. Eve worked for nearly fifty years after his death to complete her husband's work. A large collection of his Cyprus material was donated to the

Nicholson Museum The Nicholson Museum was an archaeological museum at the University of Sydney home to the Nicholson Collection, the largest collection of antiquities in both Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. Founded in 1860, the collection spans the ancient ...

in Sydney, while the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

acquired the artefacts from two tomb groups as a result of his excavations at Bellapais-Vounous in 1937–1938. He built up a large collection of coins from Rome, Byzantium, Cyprus and the Crusades.

Publications

* Stewart, J. (1937)
Excavations At Vounous, Cyprus
''Antiquity'', 11(43), 356-356.

* Cambitoglou A. 1963, bituary of James Stewart Opuscula Atheniensia IV, 205–6. * Knapp A.B. et al. (eds) 2013, J.R.B Stewart. An archaeological legacy. SIMA CXXXIX (Uppsala). * Merrillees R. 1983, 'Professor James R. Stewart: a biographical lecture' in C.A. Hope and J.K.Zimmer (eds), Catalogue of ancient Middle Eastern pottery from Palestine, Cyprus and Egypt in the Faculty of Art Gallery RMIT June 1983 and essays on Australian contributions to the archaeology of the ancient Near East (Melbourne), 33–51. Uppsala). * Merrillees R. 1994, '"The ordeal of shaving in a frozen lake". Professor J.R Stewart and the Swedish Cyprus Expedition', in P. Åström et al., '"The fantastic years on Cyprus". The Swedish Cyprus Expedition and its members (Jonsered), 38–55. Uppsala). * Merrillees R. 2013, 'Eleanor Stewart remembered' and 'Professor J.R. Stewart - archaeologist, numismatist and soldier of Cyprus', in Knapp et al. 2013, ix-xi and 185–93. * Webb J. et al. 2009, The Bronze Age cemeteries at Karmi Palealona and Lapatsa in Cyprus: Excavations by J.R.B. Stewart. SIMA CXXXVI (Sävedalen). * Powell, J. 2013, '‘Love’s Obsession: The Lives and Archaeology of Jim and Eve Stewart’' Wakefield Press, Kent Town, .

References