WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Honor Frost (1917-2010)

Two of Honor Frost’s three main passions, and ancient stone anchors, are evident in the above photograph. Soon after ’s invention of the aqualung, she became a member of the world’s first scuba diving club. One of her first dives was on a wreck in southern France inhabited by a colony of octopuses, “graceful, playful and as sensuous as cats when tickled”. Finding stone anchors not only under water in the eastern Mediterranean but built into a temple wall at Byblos was the beginning of an intense interest in the subject. Her third passion was art for she was an accomplished artist and director of publications for Tate Gallery, London. In combining these three major interests, Honor Frost merits the title of Mother of . She was the first to promote marine archaeology as a discipline, helping to found the Council for Nautical Archaeology and to establish the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology in 1972.

Participation as a draftsman in an archaeological dig near Jericho in 1957 led Honor to realize that the scientific principles and practices of terrestrial archaeology could be applied underwater as well. To that end, while investigating a Late Bronze Age wreck off the coast of Turkey in 1960 with George Bass, she produced a detailed plan of the ship. Further scientific study of the contents of this Gelidonya wreck revealed that it was a Phoenician merchantman rivaling Mycenaean traders. The investigation of the wreck, the oldest known at the time, marked the beginning of scientific underwater archaeology. Thus does our knowledge of ancient shipbuilding, ships and boats, ports and harbours, navigation and seafaring continue to expand. Unlike the wreck of the Phoenician merchantman at Gelidonya was the wreck of a Carthaginian (Punic) warship off the coast of Marsala, Sicily. After the remains of the vessel were exposed by a shifting underwater sandbank, Honor headed an international team in a four year rescue excavation, regularly publishing its progress. The team discovered that the 34-oared galley had been rammed and sunk by the Romans in the naval battle that ended the First Punic War (241 BCE). Tests on the timbers revealed that the ship had been only recently built. Although its contents were scant, there were some rare finds including a human skeleton and traces of cannabis, both producing some interesting speculation. The remains of the ship are now housed in a special gallery in the archaeological museum at Marsala.

Underwater archaeology is not always about shipwrecks however. In 1968, Honor led a UNESCO survey of the site of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Pharos (Lighthouse) at Alexandria, Egypt. Her detailed report of sunken elements encouraged further study of what was presumed to be monumental remains of the ancient lighthouse and palaces of the Ptolemies. The French government awarded her a medal for her pioneering work in marine archaeology in Egypt in 1997.

The University of Southampton, England recently announced (January, 2018) that the Archive of Honor Frost had been added to their manuscript holdings. It includes material for her maritime projects not only in France, Turkey, Sicily and Egypt but also Malta, Lebanon and Syria. Also included is her research material on stone anchors. There is a complete record for the Marsala ship expedition as well as all her key publications on , drafts of her many lectures, correspondence, photographic material and original drawings. https://specialcollectionsuniversityofsouthampton.wordpress.com/2018/01/1 9/honor-frost-archive-weighs-anchor-in-southampton/

Perhaps her most important legacy is the Honor Frost Foundation established with the £42 million raised from a three-day sale at Sotheby’s of inherited paintings by modern masters. The foundation’s mission is to ‘promote the advancement and research, including publication, of maritime archaeology with particular but not exclusive focus on the Eastern Mediterranean with an emphasis on Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus’. So far over £2,700,000 has been awarded for maritime archaeological projects in the eastern Mediterranean. One of the grants was awarded in 2013 to Ottawa’s Ibrahim Noureddine and Aaron Mior to conduct a survey of Phoenician Harbour at Tyre. For further information, see: http://honorfrostfoundation.org/about-hff/