18 Facts About Winifred Lamb

Winifred Lamb was a British archaeologist, art historian, and museum curator who specialised in Greek, Roman, and Anatolian cultures and artefacts.

Winifred Lamb directed archaeological excavations in Greece and Turkey; was a founding member of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara; and was the author of numerous books on Greek and Roman antiquities, including the 1929 publication Greek and Roman Bronzes, which was standard reading for studies on the subject.

Winifred Lamb was the daughter of Edmund Lamb, who was a Member of Parliament from 1906 to 1910, and Mabel Lamb, an alumna of Newnham College, Cambridge, who was active in the promotion of women's university education and women's suffrage.

Winifred Lamb was educated at home by governesses and tutors, and from 1913 to 1917 attended Newnham, studying Classics with a specialisation in Classical Archaeology, and earning first-class marks.

Winifred Lamb began working at the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in October 1918, at the invitation of Sydney Cockrell: her initial duties included writing labels for items on display.

Winifred Lamb first visited Greece in May 1920, briefly joining the excavations at Mycenae led by Alan Wace.

Winifred Lamb next joined the British School's excavation at Sparta in spring 1924, and subsequently excavated with Walter Abel Heurtley in northern Greece, at the site of Vardaroftsa near Thessaloniki in 1925 and at Saratse in 1929.

Winifred Lamb led excavations on this site from 1929 to 1933, largely funded at her own expense, discovering a series of prehistoric settlements.

Winifred Lamb subsequently conducted excavations at Antissa, where she discovered prehistoric, archaic, classical, and Hellenistic settlements and burials, and at the archaic sanctuary of Apollo Phanaios at Kato Phano on Chios.

Winifred Lamb presented her findings in a lecture to the Society of Antiquaries in London on 'Recent developments in the prehistory of Anatolia' in 1937, pointing out Kusura's location on a major Bronze Age route between central Anatolia and the Aegean.

Winifred Lamb published the Anatolian material held by the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Winifred Lamb felt that more excavation was required in Anatolia, but her work was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.

Winifred Lamb was a founding member of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, whose creation was initiated in 1946 by John Garstang, and served as its honorary secretary from its formal opening in 1948 until 1957, when she resigned from this role and took on the position of vice president.

In late 1941 Winifred Lamb joined the BBC's European Intelligence Unit as a Greek language supervisor, and she was probably responsible for an intelligence report of 17 November 1941 relating to BBC broadcasts to Greece and the Greek resistance to the German occupation.

In October 1944 Winifred Lamb was seriously injured when a V2 rocket hit her lodgings in north London and required a long period of recuperation, returning to work in late April 1945.

Winifred Lamb retired from her post at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1958, having become one of the museum's greatest benefactors of Greek and Roman antiquities.

Winifred Lamb continued to be involved with the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, but from 1959 her health deteriorated, often preventing her from attending meetings of the institute.

Winifred Lamb died of a stroke on 16 September 1963 in the Cottage Hospital at Easebourne.