Josephine Platner Shear (3 July 1901 - 11 February 1967) was an American

classical archaeologist Classical archaeology is the archaeological investigation of the Mediterranean civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Nineteenth-century archaeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann were drawn to study the societies they had read about ...

and

numismatist A numismatist is a specialist in numismatics ("of coins"; from Late Latin ''numismatis'', genitive of ''numisma''). Numismatists include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholars who use coins and other currency in object-based research. Altho ...

, who was excavation and numismatic lead for the Agora excavations.

Biography

Josephine Platner was born on 3 July 1901 in

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

. She studied at

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial ...

(1924) and Archaeology at Columbia University (1928). From 1927 to 1929 and from 1931 to 1939 she was a member and 1939/40 Fellow of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. From 1929 to 1931 she took part in the excavations in Corinth. In 1930 she presented her work on geometric pottery from Corinth to the

Archaeological Institute of America The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is North America's oldest society and largest organization devoted to the world of archaeology. AIA professionals have carried out archaeological fieldwork around the world and AIA has established re ...

. On 12 February 1931 she married the archaeologist Theodore Leslie Shear (1880-1945), who led the excavations in Corinth from 1925 to 1931 and in 1931 began the excavations on the

Agora of Athens The ancient Agora of Athens (also called the Classical Agora) is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora, located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill kn ...

. Although Shear was nominally Director of the Corinth excavations, it was Platner Shear who supervised the digging. The plans that Platner Shear created of the excavations are still referred to. Whilst her husband was at Princeton, she worked alongside him, and also lectured - including to the Women's College Club in 1936. During the Agora excavation she led the study and conservation of numismatics from the site, as well as making the discovery of a new 2nd-century C.E. Athenian coin. Platner Shear kept meticulous records of the numismatic material: in the 1937 season alone, 10,325 coins were excavated and catalogued in the field. The earliest of the 1937 finds was a silver obol of

Solon Solon ( grc-gre, Σόλων; BC) was an Athenian statesman, constitutional lawmaker and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in Archaic Athens.Aristotle ''Politics'' ...

, identified by Platner Shear. Terracotta skyphos

After her husband's death in 1945, she continued to live in Princeton, and in 1955 her second marriage to Floyd C. Harwood took place. She died on 11 February 1967. Objects excavated by Platner Shear are held in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

's collection.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Platner Shear, Josephine 1901 births American numismatists 1967 deaths American women archaeologists Wellesley College alumni Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Classical archaeologists American School of Classical Studies at Athens Women numismatists People from Omaha, Nebraska 20th-century American archaeologists 20th-century American women