The Mrs Stewarts. Part two - Eve Dray

Eve Dray (1914-2005) 
​Part two of a two-part series on Eleanor Stewart and Eve Stewart and their contributions to Cypriot archaeology in Australia

Written by Dr Craig Barker
The University of Sydney

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.

Eve Dray in Cyprus, 1947. Courtesy of Dorothy Eve Stewart Archives, University of New England (2013.149)

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.

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Eve and Jim Stewart at Mt Pleasant, Bathurst, 1953-54. Courtesy of Dorothy Eve Stewart Archives, University of New England (2013.149.1)

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. 

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Eve Stewart and Derek Howlett planning Lapatsa Tomb 1. Courtesy of Robert Merrillees (Webb et. al. 2009, fig 1.7)

Eve Stewart supervising Mary Ann Meagher and Yiannis Kleanthous during excavations at Karmi, 1961. Courtesy of Robert Merrillees (Webb et. al. 2009, fig 1.6)

Cyprus was inextricably linked to the pair in life and in death. Eve wrote to Jim in 1947, “it is our island … those dusty roads … mountains, the sea, the bareness … are all part of you and me” (Powell 2013, 4). Eve would carefully oversee Jim’s legacy for the rest of her life, but in the context of decreasing funds and increasingly complicated relationships with the administration of the University of Sydney. She carefully shepherded through the publication of the excavations at Ayia Paraskevi, Vasilia and Karmi, alongside other corpora of the Stewarts’ material.

​Less successful was her aim to turn the property at Tjiklos into a centre for Australian archaeology in Cyprus, especially after the Turkish invasion of 1974. Attempts at establishing a foundation for the study of Cypriot archaeology at the University of New England were also unsuccessful. However, the money Eve raised from the sale of the Tjiklos house in 1986 was invested in the purchase of a building in Nicosia by the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) where today researchers and students of the archaeology of Cyprus can stay in the J.R. Stewart residence. Museums and universities across Australia are now homes to collections of Cypriot material from the Stewarts’ excavations.

The residence and library of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) in Nicosia - www.caari.org

Red Polished III askos, c.2100-1950 BC, excavated during the 1961 season at Karmi. NM93.1, Nicholson Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney.

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.
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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

References

• Dray, E. and J. du Plat Taylor, ‘Tsambres and Aphendrika: two Classical and Hellenistic cemeteries in Cyprus’, Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 1937-39, 24–123
• Knapp, A.B., J.M. Webb and A. McCarthy (eds), J.R.B. Stewart: an archaeological legacy (SIMA CXXXIX: Uppsala 2013)
• Powell, J. Love’s Obsession: The Lives and Archaeology of Jim and Eve Stewart (Kent Town 2013)
• Stewart, E., ‘Eve Stewart on James Stewart’, in:  A.B. Knapp, J.M. Webb and A. McCarthy (eds), J.R.B. Stewart: an archaeological legacy (SIMA CXXXIX: Uppsala 2013), xiii-xiv
• Webb, J.M., D. Frankel, K.O. Eriksson & J.B. Hennessy, The Bronze Age Cemeteries at Karmi Palealona and Lapatsa in Cyprus. Excavations by J.R.B. Stewart (SIMA 136: Sävedalen 2009).