In the previous piece in the Famous Travelers to Türkiye series, I asked for an indulgence from the reader for each of the last three pieces in the series. Here, for the second-to-last one, the desired indulgence is to allow me to stretch the term "famous" to cover the British archaeologist Winifred Lamb (1894-1963). Lamb can probably best be described as semi-famous. For example, in terms of online encyclopedias, there is a Wikipedia page for her, but there is no Britannica one. The website "The Past," which is dedicated to archaeology and history news, has an article that includes her from earlier this year on the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the British Institute at Ankara, known as the BIAA – the acronym of its original name of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.

This article declares that one "key figure" in the founding of the BIAA "was Winifred Lamb" who was "the BIAA’s first Honorary Secretary." As will be seen below, this is true. But at the same time, on the BIAA’s misleadingly extensive "A Short History" page of its own history, Lamb is completely absent.

Nevertheless, I do feel that Lamb deserves inclusion in this series. Firstly, she has proved of sufficient interest to be the subject of a biography by David W. J. Gill that was published in 2018 and which is the main source for this piece. Secondly, as will be seen, her excavation work in Türkiye has had a lasting impact in the field of Anatolian archaeology. In addition, I have a personal reason for wishing to include Lamb. For she is intimately connected with the province of Türkiye in which I live – Afyonkarahisar, more generally known by its shorter form of Afyon. Lamb’s groundbreaking work, both literally and figuratively, in Türkiye took place in 1936 and 1937 at the mound of Kusura which is close to the town of Sandıklı in Afyon Province. The mound lies about 70 kilometers (40 miles) to the south of Afyon itself.

Early life

As for a brief overview of her early life: Winifred Lamb was born in London on Nov. 3, 1894, to a fairly prominent family, although, when Lamb was 4, the family moved to Sussex. Lamb had a solitary childhood being educated at home. In 1913, she entered Newnham College in Cambridge to read the Classics. As Gill notes, her "first year seems to have been a troubled one on account of her shyness and her unfamiliarity with institutional backgrounds," hence there was no indication at this point that her association with Cambridge University would be almost lifelong. She did come to find her feet there though, and what Gill calls her "passionate interest in classical archaeology" and collecting ancient artifacts soon began.

At Cambridge, in 1917, despite her excellent exam performances, because she was a woman she was not granted a degree. However, three years later, she was appointed Honorary Keeper at the Fitzwilliam Museum, where she would go on to, in Gill’s words, "create an impressive prehistoric gallery." She also joined the British School in Athens from 1920 to 1921, and despite it being extremely unusual for women at this time to take part in fieldwork, she was permitted to join the excavations in Mycenae which had been initiated in the previous century by Heinrich Schliemann after his success at Troy. This year in Greece ensured that what Gill calls Lamb’s "passion for prehistory" was now permanent and it also inspired her with self-belief. Then the following year, she was even made the second most senior figure at this dig. In subsequent years, she took part in further digs at Sparta, Vardaroftsa and Saratse in Macedonia. As Gill notes, "By 1928 Winifred was keen to start looking for her own site to excavate," and she was drawn ever closer to Anatolia, seeing it as relating to all that she had worked on so far, and her first solo dig was at Thermi on Lesbos, an island clearly visible from the Anatolian coast.

She must have wished to explore across the water, as she took up the study of Turkish in 1933. In 1934, Lamb wrote that "in Anatolia, one may find links between north and south, west and east" and she argued that it is not "possible to specialize in Minoan," the relatively newly discovered civilization of ancient Crete, "or Bulgarian antiquities or on those regions between without being compelled sooner or later to define the relations to some part of Asia Minor." With her interest being the connection of Anatolian prehistory with that of the wider region of the Aegean and the lower Balkans, she was particularly interested in the part of Anatolia that marks the crossover point between the littoral culture of the Aegean and that of central Anatolia – what is today called in Turkish Iç Ege, the Inner Aegean, region.

Although back in 1923, she had already, on a visit to Türkiye, seen Izmir, the north Aegean coast and Istanbul, whose museum she had found "very pleasant," in 1935, she made her first extensive visit to the country.

Lamb at Kusura

In the spring of 1935, Lamb entered Anatolia through Izmir and took the train from there to Eskişehir. She checked out a local mound there before moving on to Kütahya. As would be expected, Lamb compared these new parts of Türkiye with the Greece she has long been familiar with. In Kütahya she exclaimed that "I am having a marvellous journey after my own heart, it is as informal as Greece used to be when I was first there." Then, in Afyon, she exclaimed, "I am so happy. Turkey is the land of my dreams. I must transfer all my activities here." She also proclaimed, "I get on very well with the Turks." In this region, she was particularly struck by the landscape that "is bristling with mounds," and sees greater potential in the future of archaeology in Türkiye than in Greece.

She is assisted in her exploration of the area by Süleyman Gönçer, who then headed the Afyon Museum. In the end, the mound just outside of the village of Kusura is deemed suitable for excavation. Following a brief trip back to England, Lamb returns to the site and takes soundings on it. The results being positive, she commences an excavation the following year. When these excavations are underway, Lamb enthuses that "this site is so exciting. I would like to finish it this year but fear this may be impossible." Her correct prognosis that she would be unable to wrap the dig up in one season demonstrates just what a rich site Kusura was proving itself to be. Moreover, from her first year of excavation, Lamb is able to demonstrate the extreme antiquity and length of settlement of Kusura with finds that link to the lowest level of Troy.

The following year, her archaeological preoccupations did not prevent her from also dabbling in literature. She writes a short piece of detective fiction, which has never been published, with two characters based on herself. In this work, Gill notes that as an acquaintance of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, Lamb "betrays their influence." What is of interest here, though is the fact that Lamb uses her story to highlight the status of women in the recently established Turkish Republic. Her character of Mustafa, who has been sent by the government to supervise excavations, avers that "I greatly admire the progressive attitude of England towards feminine education, but Turkey is still more progressive."

As for her own excavations, in this last year at Kusura, an impressive find is revealed. Lamb notes that, "We have got the loveliest vase I have seen dug up, bright red with handsome bosses and incised ornaments, and ornate handles, nearly one metre high." Such impressive treasures and lesser ones allowed for an understanding of the mound which has been neatly summarized in a book by Ahmet İlaslı and Mevlüt Üyümez and produced by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2008. The writers state that:

"The mound revealed three strata of different settlement periods, a Chalcolithic finding at the lowest level, Early Bronze Age findings at the middle level and Hittite remains on the top level. It is evident the mound was used as an area of settlement for a long period from 3000 B.C. to 1500 B.C."

Lamb herself also asserts that Kusura formed, as she expected, a middle place that connected the Aegean world and that of central Anatolia. She posited that Kusura lay on the third of three routes that connected these two culturally significant areas. She also believes, though, that the one to the east becomes increasingly dominant with the top level of the mound.

Lamb’s later life

Her work at Kusura caused her to focus primarily on the prehistory of Asia Minor. Indeed, as Gill notes, she "was recognized as an authority on Anatolian archaeology." Furthermore, the end of the excavations at Kusura did not signal an end to Lamb’s connection with Türkiye. Back in Britain, when World War II broke out, Lamb was asked to work for the BBC to do short cultural propaganda broadcasts in Turkish. She was initially uncertain as she was not sure her grasp of the language was good enough, although she did join the BBC in 1941 with responsibilities for Axis-occupied Greece before moving to the Turkish section within the Near Eastern Department at the BBC the following year. As Gill notes, "She appears to have begun work on a series of by-monthly reports on the Turkish service, alongside those for the Arab World and Iran." Also in connection with Türkiye, Lamb took part in the setting up of a Halkevi in London in 1942, where she presented a lecture on archaeology.

In June 1944, Lamb noted a new type of German weapon being used to bomb London – that of "robot planes," by which she refers to the V1 rockets. Then in October, Lamb was badly wounded when one such weapon landed on her North London residence. She never fully recovered, and this seems to have resolved her against ever conducting another archaeological dig. However, once the war was over, it was decided that a British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara should be set up, whose mission statement was "to further British contributions to Anglo-Turkish cooperation in the archaeology of Türkiye and kindred subjects such as anthropology, folklore and ethnology." Its foundation was officially authorized by the Turkish government, and as for Lamb, she was invited to be one of its founders. She became its honorary secretary from the year of its opening in 1948 to 1957 and was seen as a useful asset due to her direct knowledge of archaeology in Türkiye, her fluency in the language and her experience working at the similar British School at Athens. She also produced a program for the BBC on the institute and archaeology in Türkiye, which was later rebroadcast on Ankara Radio.

In 1956, due to her advancing age and her injuries from the war troubling her, Lamb wished to lighten her responsibilities with the BIAA and resigned her position as Honorary Secretary, but remained as one of its vice presidents. Despite the main focus of her post-war work being with the BIAA, she continued to also work for the Fitzwilliam until 1958. She did manage another trip to Ankara at the end of 1959, but eventually, she was debilitated to the point at which she could no longer attend BIAA meetings. In 1963, she died from a stroke. Gill notes that "Winifred’s final act of benefaction was to leave the Fitzwilliam a number of her cherished objects on her death" to add to what she had gifted it during her lifetime, leading her to be described as possibly "the greatest benefactor" in the history of the museum in terms of classical antiquities."

Evaluation of Lamb

In 1956, Seton Lloyd, the then director of the BIAA, published a book on Anatolian prehistory which was described by Lamb as being marked by a "vivid freshness unspoilt by unfamiliarity." In it, Lloyd states that "some new light on relations between the Aegean province and the plateau was ... thrown by the work of W. Lamb (the first lady archaeologist in the Anatolian field), at Kusura near Afyon Karahisar." The dated term of "lady archaeologist" aside, this gives some indication of the importance of Lamb’s work. What is more, although under Lloyd the BIAA initially had what Gill calls an "eastern-facing approach" to Anatolian archaeology, eventually it would come to value most highly the middle western region that Lamb had already proven to be of great significance, and to finance an extensive dig in Beycesultan, another site that, as Gill notes, "linked the Aegean with central Anatolia."

In terms of the items excavated at Kursura, the pottery from the Early Bronze Age has led to a wider classification, as İlaslı and Üyümez state, "within archaeological publications" with a "Kusura Type of Ceramic" or "Kusura-Yortan Type Ceramic" and as such, they are "a vital indicator of dating findings in archaeology." The lasting importance of Lamb’s work is clear from this comment.

Until recently, and at the time Ilaslı and Üyümez published their book, it was easier to see these finds. For in the former Afyonkarahisar Museum a hall was dedicated to the artifacts excavated at Kusura and on one of its walls was an enlarged black-and-white photograph of Lamb and her team on the mound. However, the museum has recently relocated to an impressive multi-story new building which is of a much better size to hold and display its rich store of objects, and on which I hope to write in more detail soon. For this piece, in visiting the museum in preparation for it, I saw that the new museum has taken a chronological rather than site-based approach to the history of Afyon. This has meant that the finds from Kusura have been sorted by type and placed next to finds from other sites in Afyon Province such as those from Icehisar. Those from Kusura are also now labeled as being from Sandıklı. This new arrangement has meant that there is no place for the giant photograph of Lamb and her team.

At the site of Kusura itself, which I also visited, there is not only no trace of Lamb at all, but neither is there much to suggest that this was once an archaeological site of great importance; indeed, Ilaslı and Üyümez regard it as "the most important mound" in Afyon Province. Nature has once again turned it back to what it was when Lamb first saw it – a small mound covered in grass, though the historic riches it contained are, thanks to the hard work of Lamb and her team, on display for anyone who cares to look for them in the museum in the provincial capital. And it is in these invaluable items that the fame Lamb deserves truly lies.