Name Sylvia Benton | ||
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Sylvia Benton FSA, FSA Scot (18 August 1887 – 12 September 1985) was a British archaeologist. Working mainly in Greece, she explored the Ionian Islands and discovered the Astakos cave, and also the important Minoan site in Kythera. In Ithaca she investigated a collapsed cave in Polis Bay, whose floor was submerged. After pumping she found artefacts from the Mycenaean through Dark age to late classical times.
Biography
Sylvia Benton was born 18 August 1887 in India at Lahore where her father, Alexander Hay Benton, was a judge of the Chief Court of India.
In 1907 Sylvia went up to Girton College, Cambridge to study Classics. She went from Cambridge to teach at Bolton High School, returned to gain a Teachers Training Certificate, and thereafter held teaching posts in schools at Oldham, Reading and Clapham until circumstances allowed her to devote herself to archaeology.
In 1927-8 she was a student at the British School at Athens and assisted with excavations in Macedonia. She settled in Oxford and in 1929 by to study for the Diploma in Classical Archaeology, which she obtained in 1932. Later, in 1934, she went on to acquire a B. Litt. with a dissertation on “the Barony of Odysseus.”
Sylvia returned to England late in August 1939 and found war work in London, initially for Naval Hydrography. Later she worked with fire-fighting at night. By the spring of 1947 she was able to return to her passion where she was fully occupied in the restoration of the museums at Vathy and Stavros after the 1953 Ionian earthquake.
Her findings in the Sculptor's Cave at Covesea in Moray, Scotland, reshaped the history of the Bronze Age in northern Europe. In 1928 to 1930 she excavated the cave, bringing out pieces of its clay floor and sieving them in the gale at the cave’s mouth; under interesting relics of Roman times she found Bronze Age occupation with metal objects and bone implements.
About 1957 Sylvia turned her attention to monsters, winds, and above all birds in Greek art and literature. She published a number of articles on these topics, but her book on birds, which she had amassed material over more than a dozen years, was not accepted for publication.
Her final move in 1970 was from Oxford to the house in Lossiemouth which had been her sister's. Her mind fully occupied with archaeology and reminiscence; as always she had a fund of good stories. She had attained serenity. Towards the end she was cared for by her great-niece Mrs Elizabeth Neill and her husband at Kincraig. After a fall she died in a hospital in Aberdeen on 12 September 1985.