Lucy Talcott

Lucy Talcott was born in 1899 in Connecticut and educated at Radcliffe College, getting her B.A. in 1921.[1][2] She did her graduate work at Columbia University, from which she received an M.A.[1] She went on to study at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece.[1]

Talcott began her field work in archaeology in 1930 when she took part in excavations at the ancient Greek city of Corinth.[1] She found that curatorial work was more to her taste than field work, however, and the following year she was made recording secretary of excavations in the Athenian Agora, a position she held for the remainder of the decade.[1][2] In this capacity, she designed a system for organizing, recording, storing, and cross-referencing the many thousands of objects recovered from the Agora.[1][2] Her system came to be considered critical to the final success of the project and a model for other excavations.[2][3] She published her system in Archaeology magazine.[1] One of her assistants during the 1930s was archaeologist Alison Frantz, then just beginning her career.[2]

After a hiatus caused by World War II, Talcott returned to the Athenian Agora excavations in 1947 and stayed for a further 11 years. During this phase, she also managed the local museum.[1]

Talcott became an expert in ancient Greek painted pottery and published her research in the journal Hesperia. With fellow archaeologist Brian A. Sparkes, she wrote the two-volume study Black and Plain Pottery of the 6th, 5th, and 4th Centuries B.C. (1970), which is considered the definitive reference on household pottery of the Archaic and Classical periods.[2][4] She and Sparkes also co-wrote a popular book, Pots and Pans of Classical Athens (1958).[1]

For her work on the Athenian excavations, Talcott was decorated by King Paul in 1956.[1]

Talcott died of cancer in 1970 in Princeton, New Jersey.[1]