Jessie Webb was the first woman to teach Ancient History at the University of Melbourne. She became the benefactor of one of the largest travelling scholarships for students in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University.

Webb was born on 31 July 1880 near Tumut, New South Wales, with her mother passing shortly after and her father dying in an accident when she was nine years old. She then moved with her aunt, Jean Lauder Watson, to Melbourne where she lived for the rest of her life. Jessie was among the second generation of women to graduate from the University of Melbourne, and she continued working there for the rest of her life. She joined the staff at the University of Melbourne in 1908, becoming a senior lecturer in 1923. She functioned as acting professor three times before her death in 1944.

Throughout her time at the University, Jessie had an enormous impact on developing the Classics and Archaeology Collection at the University. While teaching at the University of Melbourne, Jessie made two research trips abroad, travelling through Africa to Europe and the eastern Mediterranean; she explored sites that she had spent a lifetime teaching, places that inspired her. These visits 1922–1923, and then again in 1936, proved a catalyst for building the teaching collection and provided a significant amount of story-telling material for students and public lectures. After her first trip, she persuaded the University to contribute 20 to 25 pounds a year to purchase 'representative Greek and Roman coins' to become part of a teaching collection. The collection now comprises 745 coins. 

During both her student years and as a staff member, Jessie was highly involved in university social life and was a member of the Princess Ida Club, the Historical Society, and the Dramatic Society. In 1910, Jessie was a foundation member of the Catalyst or the 'Cats'; then in 1912 of the Lyceum Club. Both Webb and her fellow members tended to write rhymes about meetings and themselves: ​

Jessie's main interest was ancient history, specifically that of Ancient Greece, and then in later years, Mesopotamia. During her first study leave, she visited Greece, but to get there, she took a rather unorthodox approach. In 1922-23, when she was 41 years old, she travelled alongside Dr Georgina Sweet, a fellow member of the Cats and Lyceum clubs, on a journey from Cape Town to Cairo, an adventurous feat by two well-educated professional women (O’Callaghan 2013). 

​​​After seven months of rail and ferry travel, Jessie went on to Greece. Jessie spent her leave at the prestigious British School of Archaeology in Athens, travelling to Crete from the mainland to further her research. While there, she met Arthur Evans, and later students recall her stories about him as "Screamingly funny!" (Ridley 1994, 165). At the end of this trip, she was nominated as the alternate delegate to the League of Nations assembly in Geneva where she discovered the plight of Armenian genocide survivors, returning to Australia to raise funds to support refugees.

Upon returning to Australia and subsequent 'lady of the hour' public lectures, Jessie highlighted the need for more female archaeologists and often commented on women's different statuses in different countries and universities. Her recommendation to both Australian and international counterparts was the promotion of mentorship; for educated women to watch for talented students within their fields and to give them all possible help. Jessie was a firm proponent of humanism and was noted for her support of disadvantaged students and women abroad.

Jessie travelled again in 1936, through France, Turkey, Germany and returning to Australia via Syria and Iraq. During this trip, Jessie explored the current excavation at Ur and was dazzled! The general excavation process and her meeting with Leonard Woolley left her with a sense of amazement at the scale of the history she studied. This experience and her sheer interest in 'modern' excavation techniques became a primary source for her to draw upon in her, often anecdotal, lectures. She would discuss the impact that excavation would have on historical interpretations and seemed to delight in the theoretical and scientific implications of excavation as a practice.

Jessie was a trailblazer. Her travels, which now read like an adventure novel to archaeologists and historians alike, portray her as a figure of intellectual vigour, and a woman of understated wit.

It is remarkable that upon her death she bequeathed £7128 to the University of Melbourne to endorse the study of ancient history and archaeology. The fund, originally intended to support her retirement, instead encourages students to spend a 'season' devoted to research in Greece. Jessie created this scholarship from her retirement funds to "assist a student to have the chance she herself never did, to study at the European institution she knew and remembered best, the BSA or equivalent" (Ridley 1994, 141). This remarkable opportunity has benefitted many students in their postgraduate study at the University of Melbourne. Such generosity made Jessie a fantastic teacher and endeared many to her during her time at the University.

It is a humbling experience to write about Jessie Webb and her life for AWAWS and even more so to chronicle some of her adventures and highlight her legacy. 

The authors also presented on this topic with their paper "Archaeology, Feminism and Adventure: Jessie Webb’s Legacy" as part of the AWAWS panel 'Women from Australasia in Mediterranean Studies: Past, Present and Future' at the Mediterranean Archaeology Australasian Research Community 2021 Meeting, 28 Jan 2021.

One of the most important supporters of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland was the late Mrs Betty Fletcher (née Robertson). Betty, a graduate of the University with First Class Honours in 1931, remained a supporter of the Classics at UQ throughout her life. In 1991, a travelling scholarship was set up in her name by the University’s Friends of Antiquity group in order to allow students of Classics and Ancient History at UQ to travel as part of their studies, an opportunity unavailable to Betty during her own studies due to the Great Depression. 

Elizabeth “Betty” Wilson Galloway Robertson was born in Struan, Perthshire, Scotland in November 1909. Her parents were Elizabeth Wilson Galloway (b. 1883, Ayrshire, Scotland; d. 1963, Brisbane, QLD Australia) and Hubert John Robertson, a Presbyterian minister (b. 1881, Cumberland, England; d. 1939, Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia). The family emigrated to Brisbane in 1913 along with some of Elizabeth’s family and Hubert served in various locum positions in Presbyterian churches throughout Queensland, before being fully ordained in 1918. He went on to be a leading figure in the Presbyterian Church in Queensland.

Betty was educated at Somerville House in South Brisbane and won form prizes for English, French, Latin and Greek in the Junior Exam (Grade 10) in 1925. In 1927, during her Senior year, Betty was both School and Athletics Captain and won prizes for athletics and leadership. The same year, Betty was one of only 20 recipients of an Open Scholarship to the University of Queensland for 1928. 

​At this time, the University of Queensland was located at the Old Government House site, now occupied by the Queensland University of Technology. Here Betty studied under John Lundie Michie the first professor of Classics in Queensland, and continued to excel. She graduated in 1931 with First Class Honours in Classics and the Woolcock Prize in Greek, and in 1932 with Second Class Honours in Philosophy. Because of her academic excellence, Betty was awarded a travelling scholarship to visit the University of Oxford, with passage to be provided by the P&O company. However, due to the Great Depression the offer of passage was withdrawn and she was unable to take up the opportunity. Instead, she became Classics Mistress at her alma mater, Somerville House, where she taught Latin, Greek and Ancient History. The outgoing Classics Mistress had been forced to resign as she was to be married and Betty held the post only until her own marriage to Owen Fletcher in 1935. Since 1902 it had been a requirement for female teachers to resign when they married in Queensland, a restriction which was only partially lifted in 1940 and not fully removed until 1969. The loss to Classical education in Queensland of a woman so obviously gifted was very great. 

Despite being forced to give up her career, Betty continued to be heavily involved in the Classics through her philanthropic pursuits. She endowed many school prizes in languages and Ancient History and was a member of the State Council of the Christian Movement, National Council of Women, and the Women’s Graduate Association, of which she became president in 1952.

​In 1967 the University of Queensland’s Alumni Association was formed and both Betty and Owen became active members. They were recognised for their contributions to the organisation with the granting of honorary life membership in 1988. Betty’s contributions were focused around her old discipline of Classics and Ancient History. She supported the Alumni Archaeological Scholarship, which provides funds for a student to travel and participate in an overseas excavation such as the University of Sydney’s Pella excavation, and in 1988 she became the inaugural patron of the new Friends of Antiquity group. Prior to this time, Betty had already established herself as a generous donor to the University’s Antiquities Museum. Donations of funds between 1980 and 1989 allowed the Museum to purchase a number of important artefacts: 

• In 1980, a gold stater of Alexander the Great dating to 336–323 BC
• In 1984, an Urartian bronze fibula dating to 800–600 BC
• In 1986, a marble Attic Loutrophoros fragment, inscribed for “Phanodemos, the son of Paramonos, of the Deme of Aithalidai” on the occasion of the University of Queensland's 75th Anniversary; and
• In 1989, two Macedonian tetradrachms, one of Philip II, dating to 359–348 B, and the other of Philip V, dating to 221–179 BC, to mark her 80th birthday.

Betty’s legacy at UQ continues with the Betty Fletcher Memorial Travelling Scholarship, founded by the Friends of Antiquity and Owen Fletcher in 1992. Fundraising efforts towards the scholarship began in 1990, with a series of events hosted by the Friends of Antiquity. The aim of the scholarship is to allow a student of Classics and Ancient History at the University to “travel for academic purposes in Greece, Italy, Asia Minor or any other place that was part of the civilisations of Rome or Ancient Greece, for a period of not less than 4 weeks.” To date, the scholarship has enabled 27 students (including the author) to spend time travelling overseas for the purpose of their studies. The reasoning behind a travelling scholarship was because of Betty’s missed opportunity to undertake this kind of overseas travel herself in the 1930s. In fact, it was not until 1963 that Betty travelled outside Australia for a six-month tour, visiting Thailand, Israel, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom. Stories of the impact the scholarship has had on many of its recipients were shared in a 2017 exhibition curated by the RD Milns Antiquities Museum.

In 2019, the Friends of Antiquity established a second Betty Fletcher scholarship with a donation of $50,000, matched by the University, to support students studying Classics and Ancient History who are experiencing financial hardship. In 2020, the donation of $120,000 from the Alumni Friends of the University of Queensland secured the future of the Travelling Scholarship in perpetuity. A bronze portrait medallion of Betty by Dr Rhyl Hinwood, AM, mounted on Helidon freestone, is housed in the RD Milns Antiquities Museum and a copy was donated by Owen Fletcher to Somerville House. An inscription accompanying the medallion, composed by Prof. R.D. Milns, provides a fitting tribute:

Thanks to Mrs Lyn Milns and Ms Jaime Cubit for providing access to archival documents and research assistance in developing the exhibition on which this blog is based. 

As archaeologists, we are trained to be aware that in archaeological deposits ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. It is time for us to apply such a mindset to our understanding of the discipline’s history and confront what historians of minorities have long identified as ‘historical silences’, both in archival materials and official histories (Allen 1986; Trouillot 1995). Just as the AWAWS Project is willing to address this issue in regards to the legacy of women in ancient world studies in Australia and New Zealand, a new ARC funded DECRA research project aims at telling the stories of the first Pacific archaeologists who also happened to be women. 

Pacific Matildas: finding the women in the history of Pacific archaeology responds to the call made by historian of science Margaret Rossiter 25 years ago for “future scholars to write a more equitable and comprehensive history and sociology of science that not only does not leave all the ‘Matildas’ out, but calls attention to still more of them” (1993: 337). In this landmark paper, Rossiter described the historical process – coined ‘Matilda effect’ - through which female scientists were written out of history. The historiography of archaeology - itself a side-concern for the history of science - has classically produced narratives that are fundamentally gender-biased (Claassen 1994; Diaz-Andreu & Sorrensen 1998; Cohen & Joukowsky 2004). This is especially pertinent in relation to the relatively small community of Pacific archaeologists, long apparently dominated by male practitioners. Scratching below the surface of this representation, this project proposes to analyse the reasons for the perceived or factual absence of women in the development of the discipline, study the contextual factors that led to such a situation, determine the barriers faced by those women indeed engaged in the field and, by doing so, highlight their legacy, tell their stories.
​
These themes emerged during the research I have been undertaking for the previous five years as part of the team working on the ‘Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific’ (CBAP ARC Laureate project led by Prof. Matthew Spriggs). As the very first consolidated and multilingual effort to investigate the historiography of archaeology in the region, highlighting the role of ‘hidden’ figures – namely indigenous collaborators and women engaged in the discipline – was part of our agenda. Yet, our experience clearly demonstrated the specific difficulties encountered in trying to ‘hear’ these hidden voices in the silences of the archives of Pacific archaeology. To overcome this, each of these topics needs to be examined on its own terms. For the women who were part of the development of archaeology in the Pacific to be included in the history of the discipline, explicit attention has to be given to the subject using a specific set of approaches and methods informed by gender studies and the feminist history of science, while integrating those used in the history of archaeology until now. 

​The history of women in (western) science as it is today stands at the confluence of two large movements of intellectual transformation, both starting around the 1960s: on the one hand, the development of analyses of scientific knowledge constructions that consider the importance of socio-historical and subjective contingencies; on the other hand, the influence of second-wave feminism prompting an exponential increase in research on women’s history. This intellectual context elicited foundational works in the 1980s researching the lives and legacies of women scientists.
​
In particular, the first volume of Margaret Rossiter’s foundational Women Scientists in America (1982) not only demonstrated that many women had been active in American science since the 19th century despite not being represented in dominant historical narratives, but also that they developed specific strategies to overcome oppositional reactions and the segregated structuration of the scientific establishment. These observations hold true for the rest of the western world, with women scientists finding ways to advance knowledge and practice at least since antiquity (Watts 2007), including in the belatedly appearing disciplines of the social sciences (McDonald 2004; Carroy et al. 2005). Rossiter identified the gendered assumptions that tended to keep women out of science as a masculine field, writing that 19th century “women scientists were (…) caught between two almost exclusive stereotypes: as scientists they were atypical women; as women they were unusual scientists” (1982: xvi). This question has since been much examined by feminist historians of science (Watts 2007; Schiebinger 2014) and is certainly pertinent in regards to the first women who were interested in the emerging field of prehistory/archaeology in the Pacific: not only were they entering the masculine realm of science, but also those of fieldwork and the public sphere in exotic, mostly colonial spaces – not a woman’s place by any 19th century and early 20th century expectations. It must also be remembered that in most of the western world, sociocultural gendered norms were articulated with the legal subjugation of women, severely restricting their freedom and participation in public society until the 1960s in some of the European countries that played a role in the history of Pacific archaeology.

A number of women have already been identified as a result of my previous work with CBAP and will be researched during the Pacific Matildas project; for example, traveller and artist Adèle de Dombasle who documented archaeological sites in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia during the 1840s; Jeanne Leenhardt, an essential collaborator and network agent for both her husband Maurice Leenhardt and amateur archaeologist Marius Archambault in New Caledonia during the 1900s-1920s; Laura Thompson (the second person, after Ralph Linton, to earn a PhD in Pacific archaeology, in 1933)[1] who was especially active in Marianas’ archaeology around the mid-20th century; and Aurora Natua, a key indigenous network agent, material culture and oral tradition expert collaborator for the first professional archaeologists to work in French Polynesia throughout most of the second half of the 20th century (Dotte-Sarout et al. forthcoming).
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But I will not work alone on this project, and in addition to collaborative works with colleagues in Australia and elsewhere, postgraduate research projects are proposed within this DECRA. PhD candidate, Sylvie Brassard, has just started investigating the role, names, and legacies of the elusive group of women ‘volunteers’ working at the Musée de l’Homme during the emergence of the distinct school of French ‘archéologie océaniste’ in the mid-20th century. I am looking for interested postgraduate students to examine other topics, such as the particular dynamics that characterised the increasing engagement of women in New Zealand and Australian archaeology during the 20th century; the works and unusual careers of early women anthropologists sharing an interest in string figures;  those who became specialists in material culture studies; and indigenous ‘folklorist’ experts in oral traditions linked to archaeological history. Finally, Dr India Dilkes-Hall is working with me to develop a database compiling the women’s scientific written outputs that we aim to make accessible online at the end of the project, offering a wide exposure to the Pacific Matildas’ legacies.  We also want to use it as a tool to conduct citation rates analysis in the main and most enduring archaeology journals of the region to provide a comparable measure of research impact with their male colleagues and between themselves.

Together, we want to ensure that the ‘Matildas’ of Pacific archaeology are not left out of its history.

[1] Although Margarete Schurig also completed her museum-based doctoral dissertation Die Südseetöpferei (Pacific Pottery) in 1930 in Leipzig, which remained the foremost text on the subject for at least the next thirty years.
​

The two wives of Professor James RB ‘Jim’ Stewart were his equals in fieldwork and the recording of finds from the varied Australian excavations of Early and Middle Bronze Age Cyprus directed by Stewart between the late 1930s and Jim’s death in 1962. However, neither gained significant recognition for this work during their lifetime. Jim’s first wife, Eleanor Neal, co-excavated and co-published the first Australian-directed archaeological excavations in Cyprus at Vounous between 1937-8. This blog entry will explore the life of Eve Dray, Jim’s second wife, to help reassess her importance in Cypriot archaeological studies.

Dorothy Evelyn ‘Eve’ Dray (1914-2005) was born in London to Margery and Tom Dray, an English surveyor, who worked in various capacities in places such as Egypt, Belgium and eventually Cyprus, taking his wife and daughter with him.  Eve studied French and Mathematics at Royal Holloway College between 1933-37, but she discovered an interest in archaeology when she learnt pot mending and drawing with Mortimer Wheeler at the Institute of Archaeology in London. Her skills were soon recognised. Eve worked on Wheeler’s excavations at Maiden Castle in Dorset, serving in 1936 under site supervisor Joan du Plat Taylor who encouraged Eve to join her team in Cyprus.
 
Eve found that her work with the Cyprus Museum and her skills as an archaeological illustrator became highly valued on the island. One project she worked on was Vounous with the young Jim and Eleanor Stewart. Along with Joan and Sydney-born Margaret ‘Kim’ Collingridge, Eve was a participant in the excavations of tombs at Tsambres and Aphendrika (Dray and du Plat Taylor 1939). The adventures of the team were sensationally reported in the Australian media at the time: “Archaeologist mistaken for a spy” Sydney Morning Herald 15 December 1938.
 
In 1939 Tom Dray inherited a property and land at Tjikos in the north of Cyprus, assets that would be central to the rest of Eve’s life. The building came into his possession from William Scorseby Routledge, the widower of Katherine Routledge, the first female archaeologist to work in Polynesia. Eve would later assist in the tracking down of some of Routledge’s lost archaeological documents. The house at Tjikos over time became the base for much of Eve and Jim’s fieldwork on the island.

After the war, Eve was reacquainted with Jim during his 1947 visit to Cyprus in preparation for his new teaching position at The University of Sydney. The two travelled the island to scope opportunities for Jim’s proposed Australian Cyprus Expedition and became lovers. As Jim left for Australia, he hastily devised plans to get Eve to Sydney too. In the intervening months she acted as his ‘agent’ on the island, acquiring antiquities for the Nicholson Museum and his personal collection. In Sydney she would join the now-separated Stewart, taking up the position of Technical Assistant at the Nicholson Museum. After their marriage in 1952, Eve’s employment with the museum ceased and the two relocated to Jim’s inherited manor house ‘Mt Pleasant’ near Bathurst, where Eve worked meticulously mending and illustrating finds. ​

​The Stewarts conducted fieldwork campaigns in the 1950s in Cyprus on a series of Early and Middle Cypriot burials which were not on the ambitious scale that Jim had initially planned for his Australian fieldwork projects. By the time of the couple’s final excavations at Karmi in 1961, Jim was very ill, and he passed away in 1962. 

Eve’s personal reminiscences recorded in 1999 for the fourth conference on Cypriot Studies at La Trobe University have now been published (Stewart 2013) as have some of her letters (Powell 2013). She died in a nursing home in 2005. Her archives are held in the University of New England Heritage Centre.
​
Neither Eleanor nor Eve ever held an academic position, nor were their contributions to archaeology particularly celebrated during their lifetime beyond a general admiration for Eve’s determination to promote Jim’s legacy and complete his work. Thankfully, a greater acknowledgement of their respective contributions to Cypriot archaeology has finally begun. 

​Read The Mrs Stewarts. Part one - Eleanor Neal

​Two women, Eleanor Stewart (nee Neal) and Eve Stewart (nee Dray), had a profound impact upon the development of Cypriot archaeological studies in Australia, although their contribution has often been overlooked.  James R.B. “Jim” Stewart (1913-1962) is regarded as the founder of Cypriot archaeology in Australia and a major contributor towards an understanding of the Early Cypriot period. Within the past decade he has been the subject of an international conference and the Nicholson Museum exhibition Aphrodite’s Island.
 
Unfortunately, Eleanor and Eve, his two wives and archaeological partners, have not reached the same level of recognition for their pioneering efforts in Cypriot archaeology and in Eve’s case, keeping Jim’s legacy alive. However, the process of finally recognising this contribution has begun in recent years following the publication of a biography of James and Eve based upon Eve’s letters (Powell 2013) and a short summary of Eleanor’s life (Merrillees 2013).

Eleanor Mary Neal (1911-2002) was born in Somerset, England and worked for a time as a teacher. She met James Stewart through her elder brother who was at Cambridge where James read archaeology between 1931-1934. The pair worked on Sir Flinders Petrie’s final excavation season at Tell el-‘Ajjul in Dec 1933 - Jan 1934; it was the first fieldwork experience for both. Eve and Jim became engaged in April 1934 and married on 1 July 1935; using the Neal family home at Kingsdon in Somerset as their base until the outbreak of the Second World War. Although not formally trained as an archaeologist, by the time Jim took up a scholarship at the British School of Ankara in 1936, Eleanor had become a talented draftsperson, photographer and note-keeper.
 
They had first visited Cyprus in 1935 after a trip to Australia. Both fell in love with the island, and in 1937 returned to excavate a series of 85 tombs in the Early Bronze Age cemetery of Bellapis Vounous near Kyrenia. Eleanor not only worked in partnership with Jim during the excavations, but also on the recording and publication of finds and on an exhibition which was held at the Institute of Archaeology in Regent’s Park in 1939. Virginia Grace (The American School of Classical Studies, Athens) had visited the pair in the field and admired their ability to maintain complex catalogues of finds in their cat-filled workrooms in the medieval Abbey at Bellapais at the same time as digging (Powell 2013, 58).
 
Jim spent most of the war in prisoner-of-war camps in Germany; Eleanor with the Women’s Voluntary Services. At end of the war, the couple reunited in England and welcomed the birth of their only son in 1946. Shortly after, Jim took up a teaching role at the University of Sydney, moving to Sydney without his family. He returned to Cyprus alone in 1947 where he began an affair with Eve Dray and the marriage with Eleanor would soon end after she joined him in Sydney. As James wrote to Professor Einar Gjerstad in June 1947, “It looks as if Eleanor and I are going to break up our marriage—we have failed to adjust ourselves since the war, and it is no use continuing.  If it does come to a divorce this year, I shall marry Eve Dray, the girl who has been helping me with the drawings for Vounous and Lapithos.”
 
The final publication of the Vounous material appeared in 1950, co-authored by both Eleanor and Jim. It was her only writing on the archaeology of Cyprus but the contribution was significant. Jim made it clear the volume was a partnership: ‘the work is divided between us. My wife has been responsible for nearly all of the cataloguing of finds, and I have done the description of the graves’ (Stewart & Stewart, 1950: 10). However, because the work was published as E. and J.R. Stewart and the timing of its publication a decade after its main composition, many have erroneously assumed it was the work of Eve and not Eleanor. As Eve herself would later write (Merrillees 2013): ‘Eleanor might be given more credit; like me, she was the Junior Partner in Jim’s work: she did much of the Vounous cataloguing; many of the notes … are in her handwriting.’

After their divorce, Eleanor would remarry in 1952 but avoided archaeology completely. She married Sydney barrister Kenneth Jacobs who would eventually serve as a Justice in the High Court of Australia. From 1979 Lady Eleanor and Sir Kenneth Jacobs lived in the United Kingdom. Eleanor never revisited Cyprus although it is said that the she continued to have fond memories of the island (Merrillees 2013).

• Merrillees, R.S., ‘Eleanor Stewart remembered’, in: A.B. Knapp, J.M. Webb & A. McCarthy (eds), J.R.B. Stewart: an archaeological legacy (SIMA CXXXIX: Uppsala 2013), ix-xii
• Powell, J., Love’s Obsession: The Lives and Archaeology of Jim and Eve Stewart (Kent Town 2013)
• Stewart, E. & J. Stewart, Vounous 1937–38: Field-Report on the Excavations sponsored by the British School of Archaeology at Athens (Lund 1950)
• Stewart, J.R., ‘The Early Cypriote Bronze Age’, in: P. Dikaios & J.R. Stewart, The Swedish Cyprus Expedition Volume IV Part IA. The Stone Age and the Early Bronze Age in Cyprus, (Lund 1962), 205-401

 

Editorial note
​Unfortunately photographs of Eleanor are elusive both from her early life and long marriage to Sir Kenneth Jacobs KBE QC. No known images of Eleanor are currently in the public domain.

In our previous article, Dr Alina Kozlovski highlighted some of the pitfalls in tracing married women’s research in bibliographies and citations, particularly with the popularity of the honorific Mrs during the 20th century. The historic social norm that had women changing their names in marriage also has implications for the ways in which museums understand their own archives. 

​In 1960 this calcite jar was donated to the Nicholson Museum by Mr and Mrs F.S. Burnell (as recorded in our official register). In a copy of the thank you letter addressed to Mrs Burnell curator Prof. James Stewart, remarks: “when I got down to the Museum on Tuesday I found your delightful gift of the Egyptian alabaster pot from Abydos … It will be accessioned in the name of the two of you.” A handwritten note on the file for this item also gives the address of the Burnells at the time of donation and includes the notation ‘Bought in Cairo in First World War.’ 

The inclusion of the address and initials is a great starting point for finding out more information about a donor, thanks to the ever-expanding online records available for historical research. In this instance, F.S. Burnell was relatively easy to identify. Frederick Spencer Burnell (1880-1958) was an journalist and WW1 war correspondent with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force. The State Library of NSW and the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature both have online resources dedicated to his achievements, and there is a Wikipedia entry devoted to him. However, there is no mention of his marriage or wife’s name in these records.

Given that the museum’s archival record clearly states that the Abydos jar was purchased in Egypt during WW1 and the known fact that Burnell served in the war as a correspondent, one could easily assume that he had acquired it during that period, and then, following his passing in 1958, Mrs Burnell donated the item to the museum. However, Burnell was primarily stationed in New Guinea and the Pacific region and there is no record of his presence in Egypt. So how then did the jar come to be acquired? And who was Mrs Burnell?
​
For those in Sydney, particularly in the field of classical studies, the name Burnell might be more familiar. In the 1940s, Burnell launched a campaign to save the James Martin Lysicrates Monument from destruction when the government took over the land in Potts Point where it stood, and he was instrumental in gaining public support for its transferral to the Royal Botanic Garden in 1943. In 2016, the Lysicrates Foundation published a history of the monument including a chapter on Frederick Burnell himself by Andrew Harting. It is in Harting’s wonderfully detailed chapter that he reveals when and who Burnell married:

​As pointed out by Harting, Marjorie Smyth was an accomplished woman with a full career prior to her marriage. Smyth graduated from the University of Sydney in 1910 with a Bachelor of Science with honours in Physiology and Geology/Palaeontology. In 1920, her publication Poems was reviewed favourably in The Herald  and she contributed to several exhibitions at the Grosvenor Galleries in Sydney throughout the 1930s. Today the NSW State Library holds one of her works in their collection View of Sydney Harbour Bridge under construction, ca. 1930. 

Marjorie’s ‘late in life’ marriage, at the age of 47, led some to assume that instead of marrying in 1935, as confirmed in the Australian Marriage Index, she had died (Newman 2016, 168). It is easy to see how this assumption might occur. Biographical research relies heavily upon sources like military service records, census records and similar official documentation which do not easily incorporate name changes. On the Australian Electoral Roll and census records, Marjorie Smyth ceases to exist in 1935 with Marjorie Burnell appearing on the Electoral roll from 1936. The only government record that connect these two names is the Australian Marriage Index. These types of records were, until recently, difficult to obtain and connect together. The development of commercial online web providers specialising in this kind of documentation has made biographical research somewhat easier . For prominent citizens, we might expect that significant life events, such as a marriage, would be mentioned in historical accounts of their lives. However, as we have seen in the Burnell’s case, their marriage was of little consequence to either Frederick or Marjorie’s careers and thus easily overlooked in biographical histories that focussed on their many other achievements. Thankfully, art databases and records related to Smyth’s art works accurately reflect that Marjorie Smyth was also known as Marjorie Burnell. 

Marjorie Smyth’s service during WW1 places her squarely in Egypt, and we can be certain that she was the one who purchased the Abydos calcite jar, like many other service people who bought antiquities during their wartime postings. The fact that it was donated in both her married name and her husband’s, after he had passed, is not uncommon, and was followed up by Marjorie with a donation to the University of Sydney to endow a Classical Greek essay prize in Frederick’s honour in 1962 (Calendar 1963, 452).
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The pitfalls of tracking married women in scholarship are varied and require active recognition of the many ways in which women can be easily written out, or in this case, ‘assumed out’ of history. The donation credit line for the Burnell’s Abydos jar has now been updated in the Nicholson Collection's databases to reflect the full names of both individuals, including an acknowledgement of Marjorie’s maiden name, and Marjorie has now been acknowledged as the collector of the item.

Eugénie Sellers Strong is almost a celebrity when it comes to 20th century Greco-Roman archaeology. Her many contributions to the field are well known and not so hard to track. A bigger worry is how many other women’s names have fallen out of bibliographies when well-meaning researchers have wanted to modernise their citations. It is hard to know what women thought about being published under their husband's names in the contexts in which they lived. As today, the Mrs. might have been a symbol of oppression for some. For others, it might have been a source of pride. 

​Bibliographic conventions are not neutral in how they organise information and evolve as society’s standards change. As such, we have to be aware when we are dealing with an older system and double check that information is being carried across correctly. Who knows how many people’s contributions have been hidden behind someone else’s name.

Readers might also find these other resources useful:

• Suggestions on how to cite trans authors: https://medium.com/@MxComan/trans-citation-practices-a-quick-and-dirty-guideline-9f4168117115
• Suggestions on how to cite the knowledge of indigenous people and groups originally recorded by non-indigenous researchers: ​https://archivaldecolonist.com/2020/05/07/indigenous-referencing-prototype-non-indigenous-authored-works/

‘one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern age’
(The Times, 13 May, 2011)

On Friday 18 September, 1953 The Adelaide Advertiser (p.15) reported  that ‘[a] young woman graduate of the University of Adelaide, Miss Margaret Hubbard, has returned home for a short visit after four years at Oxford, with a record of attainment in classical scholarship that has never before been achieved by a woman or by an Australian, man or woman.’ Apart from observation of Adelaide University in the 1940s, I don’t know what made Margaret say to the reporter ‘Women scholars have a bad run in Australia’. I do know that this remained true for decades and that she did not get the job that she was interviewed for at the University of Sydney c. 1955. If she had she would have been the first female professor in Australia (the first were in 1962-63, a palaeontologist and a professor of French.
 
At school Margaret had a passion for Egyptology, but, as Adelaide University did not teach hieroglyphics, she studied Latin, Greek and English there, eventually tutoring in English. Her knowledge of English literature was deep and extensive and partly accounts for the special character of her work on Latin literature. At Oxford she read for the undergraduate degree (as was usual at that time for graduates from abroad), and afterwards had a period working for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich, and studying manuscripts of Cicero’s agrarian speeches in Florence.
 
Margaret was as good a textual critic as anyone but the Cicero edition was not to be. In 1957 she became a Founding Fellow of a new Oxford college for women, St Anne’s, and their Mods don (classical languages and literature tutor), absorbed for the next nearly thirty years in the heavy duties of teaching, examining, and college and university governance, all of which she took very seriously. Research was done between 4 o’clock in the morning and breakfast. The long vacations provided the opportunity for camping trips in Greece and Italy.
 
Margaret’s way of teaching was to treat her students as her equals. If you worked really, really hard you might just be able to understand. Then it was exciting, but it was easy, despite her kindness, to feel intimidated by her force of intellect and superb memory. She was a generous teacher. Some graduate students I knew, dissatisfied with their designated supervisors, found their way to her, completed successfully and became devoted friends. Such friendships were consolidated around her dining table with excellent food and wine.
 
In keeping with the prevailing expectations of her time ­— the one book that was the summation of a lifetime’s research — and her own high standards (she prized truly new insights) Margaret did not publish much at first. What must have been many years of early-morning labour came to fruition in 1970 with the publication of the famous 440-page Oxford commentary on Horace Odes Book 1, written jointly with R. G. M. Nisbet. One quote sums up the enthusiastic reactions of reviewers: ‘no commentary of equal stature has appeared in our days.’ (Sullivan, 1971, 116) To students of my era it came as a revelation: traditional commentaries could be cutting edge. The second volume followed in 1978.
 
But where Margaret can be seen most clearly is in her ‘own’ book, Propertius (London, 1974) — trenchant, original, erudite and focussed on questions that matter. It is still a landmark, even if was overtaken by the ‘New Latinist’ innovations of the next generation. (She examined the D. Phil. thesis of one of the most famous New Latinists, Don Fowler.) Around the same time she published a carefully considered and highly-regarded translation of Aristotle’s Poetics (1972), and her final project was a history of the reception of that work, abandoned after her retirement, which she spent happily with her partner Gwynneth Matthews, in her favourite pursuits: wide reading, cooking, gardening, travel and cross-words.

​I first stepped foot in the Nicholson Museum as a high school student on a class excursion eager to become an archaeologist one day. I was lucky enough to join the ranks of the Nicholson’s volunteers as an undergraduate and have gone on to work with the collections as an educator, a collections’ auditor and am now the Assistant Curator for the Nicholson Collection. While I continue to be enthralled by the antiquity that surrounds me, I have become more and more fascinated with the people who have made the Nicholson Collection what it is today. With over 30,000 items representing many ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, the collection reflects the interests, specialities and relationships of the people who helped it grow over the past 160 years. Unfortunately, when the story of the Nicholson Collection is told, it is often only the people in the most prestigious position, that of Honorary Curator (also Head Curator or Senior Curator), who are highlighted. As this position has been exclusively held by men, an official institutional history has been created without any women. To recover the stories of women and their role in shaping museum collections we must look beyond the Curator.

The roles of women in museums varied greatly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, largely responding to the social constraints of gender roles in contemporaneous society. In 20th century Australia, women were restricted from the public service due to their marital status up until 1966 when the Marriage Bar was finally removed from the Public Service Act. Legislation like this had a number of knock-on effects for women’s education more broadly, but also the roles women were able to pursue in museums and universities. Nevertheless, a great many women made a substantive contribution to Australian museums including the Nicholson.
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Archival research at the Nicholson has revealed that women’s contributions come in many forms including administrative and technical support often undertaken behind the scenes for the improvement of the collections; research and publication of the collections; education and public outreach; collecting activities, often as part of archaeological research on behalf of the museum or financing collecting practices; donors to the collection; and finally, as family support when women are often active in the research or collecting process and then if outliving their partner assume responsibility for the management of collections and posthumous legacies. The teasing out of the individual stories and collective roles women played is part of my long-term research project ‘The Hidden Women of the Nicholson Museum.’ It is hoped that in addition to highlighting the many accomplishments and contributions women have made throughout the history of the Nicholson, we can examine how we construct our own histories, and offer new approaches to constructing historically accurate and inclusive institutional narratives.

​I was delighted to be able to contribute to the Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies panel on the history of women in the discipline at ASCS 41 and introduce this research project. I hope it will continue to contribute to the broader goals of AWAWS to document the varied ways in which women have forged new paths in ancient world studies and mentored the next generation of women in the discipline.