Lucy Talcott (April 10, 1899 – April 6, 1970) was an American

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

who worked on the excavations at the

Ancient 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 ...

for over twenty years. An expert on ancient Greek painted pottery, she coauthored the definitive study of Archaic and Classical household pottery.

Biography

Lucy Talcott was born in 1899 in Connecticut and educated at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

, getting her B.A. in 1921. She did her graduate work 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 ...

, from which she received an M.A. She went on to study at the

American School of Classical Studies , native_name_lang = Greek , image = American School of Classical Studies at Athens.jpg , image_size = , image_alt = , caption = The ASCSA main building as seen from Mount Lykavittos , latin_name = , other_name = , former_name = , mo ...

at Athens, Greece. Talcott began her field work in archaeology in 1930 when she took part in excavations at the ancient Greek city of

Corinth Corinth ( ; el, Κόρινθος, Kórinthos, ) is the successor to an ancient city, and is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has been part o ...

. She found that curatorial work was more to her taste than field work, however, and the following year she was made recording secretary of excavations in the Athenian Agora, a position she held for the remainder of the decade. In this capacity, she designed a system for organizing, recording, storing, and cross-referencing the many thousands of objects recovered from the Agora. Her system came to be considered critical to the final success of the project and a model for other excavations. She published her system in ''

Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

'' magazine. One of her assistants during the 1930s was archaeologist Alison Frantz, then just beginning her career. After a hiatus caused by World War II, Talcott returned to the Athenian Agora excavations in 1947 and stayed for a further 11 years. During this phase, she also managed the local museum. Talcott became an expert in ancient Greek painted pottery and published her research in the journal Hesperia. With fellow archaeologist Brian A. Sparkes, she wrote the two-volume study ''Black and Plain Pottery of the 6th, 5th, and 4th Centuries B.C.'' (1970), which is considered the definitive reference on household pottery of the Archaic and Classical periods. She and Sparkes also co-wrote a popular book, ''Pots and Pans of Classical Athens'' (1958). For her work on the Athenian excavations, Talcott was decorated by King Paul in 1956. Talcott died of cancer in 1970 in Princeton, New Jersey.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Talcott, Lucy 1899 births 1970 deaths Radcliffe College alumni Columbia University alumni Classical archaeologists American women archaeologists 20th-century American archaeologists 20th-century American women