Alice Walker

A Classical archaeologist, born in San Francisco California, Alice Walker earned her A.B. and A. M. from Vassar (1907 and 1908) and then returned home to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on “The Pottery of the Necropolis of Locrian Halae,” which was never published. Before her doctorate was conferred (1917), Walker had become a fellow in archaeology at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens starting in 1909 and remained there until 1914. In 1910 she had been assigned the task of publishing all the pottery (up to Byzantine) found in the excavations of the American School at Corinth, their longest-running expedition. This task would consume her career and be left incomplete by the time of her death. Meanwhile, field work attracted her and in 1911 she joined Hetty Goldman (q.v.) at the archaeological site of Halae (Theologou near Malesina), they being the first women to lead an expedition on mainland Greece. Walker spent much of the academic year 1914-15 working in Corinth, and trench work there yielded the most significant deposit of Early Neolithic pottery for the area, but her work was interrupted by World War I.. She took up the spade again in 1920 and subsequently would become the leading expert on the Neolithic period in Southern Greece. Meanwhile, she was much involved with trying to improve the life of women students at the American School and, being of independent means, she became a major donor there as well. Unfortunately, Dr. Walker was plagued both by bouts of malaria and by constant pressure from the American School’s Managing Committee to bring out her publication. She married a Greek, who had been a devoted foremen on her expeditions, Georgios A. Kosmopoulos in June of 1924 and they were together the rest of her life, producing a son who predeceased her in 1947. Throughout the 1920’s she continued to work on the pottery from Corinth, which had become a huge corpus, taking up valuable space in the School’s expedition headquarters at Corinth. By 1926, in the interest of speeding her publication, her responsibilities were narrowed down to only the pottery through the Corinthian period, while S.B. Luce would work with the material beginning in mid-sixth century down through Roman. Through 1935, Dr. Walker continued to excavate and to add new material to her study of the pottery. This heightened tensions with the School’s Acting Director Edward Capps and the period of 1936-37 saw increasing acrimony as he believed in prompt publication. Charles A. Morgan II, who became Director for 1936-38 had no patience with the pre-historian Walker, especially when she took time to arrange an exhibit of the Corinth’s pottery at the National Museum in Athens, when the School thought any exhibit should be at Corinth. Morgan also took exception to her plan to publish her magnum opus in Germany rather than through the American School’s own publication committee. Dr. Walker eventually agreed to ship her pottery back to Corinth, but when some of the material was found to have been kept behind in Athens, Morgan severed her connection with the School. Indeed, a large quantity of the pottery remains in Athens until the present. Walker’s manuscript was ready for publication in 1939 in Munich when World War II erupted and halted the process. It finally appeared in 1948, the first volume of a proposed three, the rest never appearing. The Kosmopoulos’s retired to California and she published only one further scholarly article.

Author of biography: John C. Lavezzi
Includes bibliography? Yes

Download biography (in PDF format)

Keywords: James Greig Walker, San Francisco, Vassar, University of California, Halae, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth, Roman forum at Corinth, Hetty Goldman, Harriet Boyd Hawes, Edith Hall, Richard Seager, Crete, Bert Hodge Hill, Walter Leaf, Carl Blegen, Temple Hill, Neolithic pottery, Edward Capps, Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Schliemann, southern Greece, Zygouries, malaria, Mary Kalopouthakis, Magouliana, Arkadia, Methydrion, Rhea, Pausanias, Georgios A. Kosmopolos, National Museum, Oscar Broneer, Lucy Shoe Meritt, Stephen Bleeker Luce, George H. Chase, G. Oilonomos, A. Philadelpheus, Corinth Museum, Prehistoric vases, Charles H. Morgan, Saul S. Weinberg, Georg Karo, German Archaeological Institute in Athens, Bruckmann Verlag, Munich, Santa Barbara, David Moore Robinson, Mary Campbell Roebuck, damnatio memoriae, Mopsie, Richard Stillwell, Birch-bark technique