Ida Thallon Hill

This field archaeologist in Greece was born in Brooklyn New York and received her bachelor's degree from Vassar, where she began her classical studies. After graduation she spent two years at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where she got her first taste of field archaeology with the Weller excavations at the Vari cave in Attika. After she returned to the States, Ida Thallon enrolled at Columbia University and received a Ph.D. there in 1905. She then returned to Vassar where she taught first Latin and later ancient history. During this time she published two books, but she was not an historian at heart and resigned in 1924 to marry, at age 49, an old friend Bert Hodge Hill, then Director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. This new career surrounded her with archaeologists and drew her to work in the field again. She published the Corinthian terracottas and worked on the Blegen expedition at Heraeum in Argos where an important Bronze Age settlement, Prosymna, had been unearthed. Ida also found it necessary to write much of the annual report on the Corinth expedition for her husband and continued to do much editorial work for him. Eventually he was forced to resign his position and Carl Blegen took over as Acting Director for 1926-27. Ida worked at Prosymna in the 1927-28 season and then with Blegen at Troy and with her husband at Lapithos on Cyprus. She published a textbook on Athenian topography, which summarized recent archaeological investigation in Athens: Ancient City of Athens. Committed to field archaeology, Dr. Thallon Hill was still excavating (at Pylos) in her seventies and died with a manuscript unfinished on "50 years of excavations" which would have been a textbook for classical archaeology.

Author of biography: Natalia Vogeikoff
Includes bibliography? Yes

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Keywords: Vassar College, American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Lida Shaw King, William Dörpfeld, Harriet Boyd, Rufus Richardson, H.W. Smyth, Charles Weller, Vari cave, Maurice E. Dunham, Kavousi, Crete, Corinth, David Hogarth, Sir Arthur Evans, Lycosura, Lucy Salmon, A.T. Olmstead, Troy, Balkans, Danube, Rome of the Kings, Bert Hodge Hill, Carl W. Blegen, Harold N. Fowler, Corinthian terracottas, Elizabeth Blegen, Ploutarchou, Prosymna, Pylos, Lapithos, Cyprus, Jane Harrison, Newnham College, Athenian Agora, North Slope, Akropolis, Athens, Athenian triumvirate, G.P. Stevens, W.B. Dinsmoor.