Maria Georgopoulou unfolds the role of women in exploring, understanding and archiving the past Plenary: Open for all? Diversity & disparity in Open Science. Presentation Abstract: Exploring the position of women in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (founded in 1881) offers insights into the various roles that women have played as archaeologists, conservators, librarians and archivists in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. From the first woman to be accepted as a Member of the American School in 1885 to the installation of the first woman director of the School (Jenifer Neils) two months ago, a lot has changed. Yet, there is ample evidence to suggest that women today are still underpaid and lag behind men in the higher echelons of the academy. What can the history of women in the American School teach us about access to science? Often obscured in the shadow of their husbands, educated American women in the beginning of the 20th century had to reinvent themselves in order to find a worthy occupation that would befit their skills and aspirations. The first women archaeologists at the American School strove to gain a position worthy of the excellent training they had received in the American Women’s colleges. Stereotypes pushed them to the exploration of more “domestic” topics, minor objects like the cataloguing of small finds, as well as to administrative and organizational duties. It is instructive that the first woman ever to direct an excavation on mainland Greece, Hetty Goldman, believed that the only reason she had been allowed to excavate at Halae was to get her as far from Athens as possible; so hostile to women excavators was the tone at the American School in 1911. Twenty years later, despite the fact that women were outshining the men who took the exams to win fellowships at the American School, it was proposed to establish a fixed ratio of fellowships between men and women, one that would award many more to men. More: www.opensciencefair.eu/speakers/maria-georgopoulou DAY 2 - 09:15 PLENARY

1. “The role of women in exploring, understanding
and archiving the past.”
Maria Georgopoulou, Director
Gennadius Library, The American School of Classical
Studies at Athens

2. Annie S. Peck, first woman student at
American School of Classical Studies at
Athens in 1885-1886. Apparently, a few
years later she urged the Managing
Committee to appoint a "lady director."
After a brief teaching career Annie went on
to become a famous mountaineer. And
that's what she is famous for today!

4. The “typical” university worker is not a highly paid professor, nor a lecturer on his way to getting a chair. She is a low paid
woman on a temporary contract. Photograph: Alamy (source: The Guardian, 2016)

5. Gertrude Bell in front of the Sphinx and pyramids at Giza, in Egypt with Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence

6. Gertrude Bell and her excavation team at Binbirkilise, Turkey in 1907, later joined by Ramsay. Although their joined
publication The Thousand and One Churches (1909) is generally listed under his name, Gertrude Bell contributed 460 pages,
while Ramsay wrote only 80 pages.

7. Hetty Goldman as “Die Gelehrte Frau” examining antiquities in the Museum at Thebes.
Bryn Mawr College Archaeology Department, Tarsus Archives

8. Harriett Boyd and Edith Hall, Excavations at Gournia, Crete, in 1900.

9. Virginia Grace (1901-1994) studied stamped
amphorae handles.

10. Alison Frantz (1903 -
1995).
Archaeological
photographer at the
Agora excavations
and a Byzantine
scholar.

11. Dorothy Burr Thompson with her Agora Excavations workmen, Athens, Greece, circa 1930s.
Lucy Shoe Meritt Collection, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

12. “…[they] danced round and round while the men sang, and
then they answered in whining voices.” At 11 p.m., as they were
about to leave, the bride sat down with the other women
around her. “Then they were expected to weep and they wept
almost immediately. It was uncanny; the tears slowly trickled
down the bride’s face; some of the women almost sobbed, and
also the men! All the time they chanted a melancholy song —
only the women. Suddenly one felt face to face with the past –
without a haze— as though one was hearing one of Sappho’s
epithalamia.”
Photo: Dorothy Burr dancing with the bride’s mother at the
wedding in the village of Parapoungia, 1924. ASCSA Archives,
Dorothy Burr Thompson Photographic Collection.

13. Lucy Talcott (1899-1970), in charge of
‘records’ at the Agora excavations from
1929-1958. Photo, ASCSA Archives.
Lucy invented a ingenious system of
recording thousands of accessioned
materials from the excavations.
Information from the excavators fields
notebooks was transferred onto cards:
precise identification, day of excavation,
inventory number etc. were set
down. Description and measurements
were given. A category number was
allotted: P for pottery, I for inscription and
so forth. Date of manufacture, designs and
one or more postage stamp size
photographs of each object where
attached.

15. Jack Davis at side of grave and Shari Stocker inside

16. Excavations at the Palace of Nestor (Pylos), Team of 2015

17. Natalia Vogeikoff-
Brogan, Head
Archivist, American
School of Classical
Studies at Athens