Hetty Goldman’s Legacy

Caricature of Hetty Goldman by Piet de Jong, 1925 Image Rachel Hood/Leopard's Head Press

Hetty Goldman’s publications alone would have been enough to make a lasting impact on field archaeology and on Greek and Near Eastern history. A year after her death, a symposium in her memory recounted her influence in Classical, prehistoric, and Near Eastern studies. Her account of the excavation of Eutresis was called “a basic building-block in all subsequent studies of the Bronze Age in Greece.” Her chronology of Tarsus has served as a guide for archaeologists trying to link prehistoric sites in Egypt with the West and for those trying to establish linkages between the Euphrates basin and Anatolia. Excavations at Halai resumed in 1990 based on Goldman’s demonstration of its significance as a coastal community in several eras. Goldman’s focus on cross-cultural influences and on the lives of common people are now prevalent throughout historical studies. Archaeologists have named her reports and publications as models of thoroughness and style that they have sought to live up to in their work.

Goldman’s legacy goes beyond the influence of her own studies, however. She was not one to keep her views, experience, or resources to herself. Beginning with the excavation of Colophon in 1922, Goldman served as teacher and mentor to dozens of young archaeologists, many of them women. Though the Institute has no undergraduate or graduate students, Goldman worked with students through arrangements with Bryn Mawr and with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. At the Institute, she worked with scholars at more advanced stages. “For me this opportunity of exchanging ideas with younger scholars while pursuing my own studies constitutes one of the most attractive features of life and work at our Institute,” she wrote to Aydelotte. “I know of no other place in America where it is possible on quite the same terms, for only here are we all free from the pressure of teaching and extra-curricular duties.”

To younger generations of archaeologists, Goldman advocated decisive action and thought. “The field archaeologist must have the courage both to collect and to interpret wisely and boldly,” she advised Bryn Mawr students in 1955. “Better a theory if the data at all allow, which may eventually be proven inadequate or false, for it will stimulate the imagination and awaken speculation in others who may well reach more acceptable results.”

When Goldman was preparing for retirement, she wrote at length to Aydelotte about the proper role of the field archaeologist:    

His chief function is to be the intelligence in which the results of the excavation are synthesized and in which what has been destroyed continues to exist. For the process of excavation is of course in part a process of destruction especially where a number of superimposed towns and cultures are to be studied. Although no excavation can be successful without a very careful scientific method of field work and of recording, this cannot make its success which, although there are many contributing factors, lies in the powers of interpretation, deduction, and synthesis of its head.

Hetty Goldman, with Hans Güterbock, in the Public Gardens at Tarsus Photo Theresa Goell, Bryn Mawr College Archives

In this Goldman’s position was distinctive—field archaeology was an increasingly vigorous and fruitful academic pursuit, and many were eager to demonstrate its scientific legitimacy at the expense of attention to subjective interpretation.

Goldman's views on the role of the archaeologist also extended to the preservation of local heritage. She was adamant that the vast majority of the antiquities excavated under her direction go to museums in their countries of origin, and she sought to train local people in their care. “We hope, when the excavations are over to leave Turkey not only the material of our finds but competent craftsmen to take their place in the museums of the country,” she wrote. Other archaeologists returning to the areas she had worked decades earlier reported finding particularly skilled workers whose fathers had worked on Goldman’s excavations.

Goldman’s legacy is also felt in American institutions, as she gave generously to the communities she benefited from. She donated her library, much of it inherited from Julius Sachs, to the Institute’s Historical Studies–Social Science Library, where it formed the core of its archaeological collection. In her will, she also set aside a fund to be directed to the endowment of the School of Historical Studies. This fund has been used to support visits to the Institute by young archaeologists and historians, who have followed the path Goldman blazed both in uncovering historical evidence and in discerning its meaning.

Life | Work | Legacy

References

In addition to documents in the collection of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center at the Institute for Advanced Study, the following sources were consulted during the preparation of this profile:

John L. Caskey, Robert W. Ehrich, et al., A Symposium in Memory of Hetty Goldman, 1881–1972 (Institute for Advanced Study, 1974)

Hetty Goldman, Excavations at Gözlü Kule, Tarsus, 3 vols. (Princeton University Press, 1950–63)

Machteld J. Mellink and Kathleen M. Quinn, "Hetty Goldman, 1881–1972," in Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists, ed. Getzel M. Cohn and Martha Sharp Joukowsky (University of Michigan Press, 2004)

Homer A. Thompson, "Preface," in The Aegean and the Near East: Studies Presented to Hetty Goldman on the Occasion of her Seventy-fifth Birthday, ed. Saul S. Weinberg (J. J. Augustin, 1956)