Barbara G. Adams

Barbara Adams, FRSA (19 February 1945 – 26 June 2002) was a distinguished British Egyptologist and specialist in predynastic history . She worked for many years at Hierakonpolis, where she was the co-director of the expedition. Before this she worked at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London and worked on excavations across Britain.

Early career and the Petrie museum

In 1962, Adams became an assistant at the Natural History Museum. Having specialised in entomology early in her working-life and whilst engaged in activities at the Natural History Museum, she became an assistant of R.B. Benson. Skills of scientific procedure used in museum preparations transferred to Dr K.P. Oakley's anthropology department in 1964 where she became acquainted with tool-artifacts and gained knowledge of the skeletal anatomy of humans.^[1] The following year her employment with Professor Harry Smith provided impetus to her career, the position of Edward Chair in Egyptian Archaeology of the University College of London, first held by Sir W. M. F. Petrie, being held by Smith.

Her first practical experience in 1965 was an excavation in Yorkshire by the University of Leeds. Later the same year she assisted in cemetery digs in Winchester and elsewhere within England. Contacts with artifacts from the Romano-British site at Dragonby in Lincolnshire) in excavations of 1966 were followed by a seminal encounter in the same year with Hierakonpolis artifacts. She travelled to Egypt during 1969 and studied field techniques for archaeology at the university of Cambridge. Her 1974 text on the subject of ancient Hierakonpolis showed the catalogued findings of Quibell and Green and was complemented by a lauded explication of the F.W. Green field notes. She turned her literary attention intermittently in the proceeding years to archived documents held in museums of the United Kingdom. Her knowledge of the Petrie collection allowed for her appointment as assistant curator at the Petrie museum.^[1]

Hierakonpolis and onward

Adams was the pottery and objects expert for Michael A. Hoffmann's re-established excavations of 1979-80 assisting at a cemetery of a predynastic elite group and she worked on the site until 1986. In 1981 she worked as assistant to Walter Fairservis at Nekhan in and again in 1984.^[2] After Hoffmann's death, Adams and Friedman became co-directors of the excavation which continued until 1996. She has been credited with the discovery of previously unknown funeral-masks and a life-size statue. She was editor of the Shire Egyptology Series (numbering 25 books in total). Her final work was based upon vase fragments from a cemetery at Abydos.^[1]

Bibliography

• Barbara Adams, Excavations in the Locality 6 cemetery at Hierakonpolis: 1979 - 1985, Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000, ISBN 1-84171-099-7
• Barbara Adams, Ancient Nekhen - Garstang in the city of Hierakonpolis, New Malden: Shire Publications, 1990, ISBN 1-872561-03-9
• Barbara Adams, Predynastic Egypt, Aylesbury Shire Publications, 1988
• Barbara Adams, The Fort cemetery at Hierakonpolis: excavated by John Gerstang, London: KPI, 1987, ISBN 0-7103-0275-4
• Barbara Adams, Sculptured Pottery from Koptos in the Petrie Collection, Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1986, ISBN 0-85668-389-2
• Barbara Adams, Egyptian Mummies, Aylesbury Shire Publications, ISBN 0-85263-944-9

References

External links

• Cincinnati and Brown