Honor Frost

Honor Frost (October 28, 1917–September 12, 2010) was a pioneer in the field of underwater archaeology, who led many mediterranean archaeological investigations specially in the Lebanon and was noted for her typology of stone anchors and skills in archaeological illustration.[1]

Contents

Early life

An only child, Frost was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. She was orphaned at an early age and became the ward of Wilfred Evill, a London solicitor.[2]

Career

Frost became a diver soon after Cousteaus's invention of SCUBA and she worked as a diver and artist in the early 1950s in France and Italy.[3] Her first experience of the underwater excavation of shipwrecks was with Frederic Dumas.[4] She met Joan du Plat Taylor at the Institute of Archaeology in London and in 1959 went on to work with Du Plat Taylor, Dumas and Peter Throckmorton in Turkey; an expedition that resulted in the discovery of the late Bronze Age shipwreck at Gelidonya, for which Frost is credited as having realised the significance and which later was the site of George Bass's and Peter Throckmorton's first experience of underwater archaeology at Cape Gelidonya in the Antayla region of souther Turkey. The Bronze Age ship wreck, which dated to the 12 century BC was the oldest known shipwreck in the world at that time.[5]

In 1968 she led an UNESCO expedition to survey the Pharos site in the Port of Alexandria, for which she was later awarded, in 1997, a French government medal for pioneering submarine archaeology in Egypt.[6]

From 1971 she led the investigation of the Marsala Punic Warship in Sicily, Italy[7]

In 2005, BSAC awarded her the Colin McLeod award for Furthering international co-operation in diving for her work in archaeology[8]

She died on 12 September 2010.[9]

Selected Papers

See also

External links

Notes

  1. ^ Norton (1999) p235, Shea (1981), Vagnetti (1998)
  2. ^ "Obituary: Honor Frost". The Daily Telegraph, UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/8097603/Honor-Frost.html. Retrieved October 30, 2010. 
  3. ^ Hirschfeld p11
  4. ^ Norton (1999) p. 235
  5. ^ Hirschfeld pp11-12, Norton(1999) p. 234, pp. 248-252, 253-258
  6. ^ UNESCO (1997); Dept. Culture; Hairy (2006)
  7. ^ The Times (2004); Frost (1974), see selected papers
  8. ^ BSAC (2005-2010)
  9. ^ The Times, 17 September 2010; Gambin (2010)

References