Read Online Love's Obsession by Judy Powell - Free Book Online Page B

enjoyed debating theories and issues of disagreement—were the Neolithic connections of Cyprus with Anatolia? Was it a true Neolithic or rather Chalcolithic? Dikaios had excavated tombs in an Early Cypriot cemetery complex at Vounous in Northern Cyprus and recently the French archaeologist Claude Schaeffer had worked there as well. Jim puzzled at the pottery from these tombs, such crazy and bizarre shapes. Jim met all the people then working at the museum, recently reorganised and incorporated into a new Department of Antiquities. The assistant curator, Joan du Plat Taylor, had only just returned from two months leave in England during which time she had excavated a Roman forum site in Leicester with Kathleen Kenyon and it is likely the Stewarts met her at the museum. Perhaps they discussed her plans for a new handbook of the collection.
    Hilton’s appointment as the Director of Antiquities was not to last for much longer. Jim complained to Alan Wace that Rupert Gunnis, then Inspector of Antiquities, had ‘fomented complaints’, which had led to Hilton’s dismissal and imminent removal. According to local villagers, Gunnis also dealt in antiquities. This was more or less generally known, Jim said, both on the island and abroad amongst archaeologists—the Wellcome Museum in London had bought some of Gunnis’s collection and further pieces were sold at Sotheby’s in 1933. It was rumoured that Gunnis even instigated the plundering of a tomb by night and got the contents out either by signing his own export permits or by carrying it in his personal baggage, but there was no single incident that could be proved. Jim believed that Sir George Hill, Director of the British Museum, was trying to secure his dismissal for the tomb robbery and thought Porphyrios Dikaios at the Cyprus Museum could supply relevant information. Jim wrote to Wace in some length ‘because it seems to me a very serious matter’. 38
    Jim’s concern is telling. A collector himself, wherever he travelled Jim hunted down coins and sat in cafes waiting expectantly for villagers to offer objects for sale. He had no qualms about this and most of what was offered he purchased legally. Most authorities granted export licences for antiquities bought from reputable dealers, although growing nationalist voices raised objections and changes would later come. Collectors feared these increasing restrictions, but the issue is complex. Everyone collected; being a serious archaeologist was irrelevant. During this period Jim collected sherds and bought pots for Lewis Clark at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Jim wrote regularly to Alan Wace describing the material he was sending and there is no suggestion of impropriety. Commercial dealing in antiquities by an Inspector of Antiquities was another matter, however, and Jim was scandalised.
    After Cyprus the Stewarts sailed for Greece but found Athens a disappointment and Jim thought the National Museum ‘a horrible mess’. They celebrated Christmas at the British School, enjoyed meeting Peter Megaw, who was about to take up a position in Cyprus, but found few other kindred spirits and in any case ‘Jim had a cold’. Greece suffered, he decided, by comparison with Cyprus. 39 In January 1936 Jim and Eleanor finally arrived in Istanbul to prepare for the archaeological research the Wilkins Fellowship was to sponsor.
    Archaeology evokes mystery and romance. Eager young students dig into the earth with fine tools and fierce concentration, sifting through layer upon layer of dirt and mudbrick, searching for pottery sherds and listening for the dull clunk of metal. People squat in the dirt, their hair, clothes and heavy boots caked with mud or clay. Others stand at the sieves picking through small stones and grass for slivers of bone, while the director bends down with a tape measure to talk intently with a workman.
    The reality rarely meets