Theresa Goell
Theresa Bathsheba Goell ( born July 17, 1901 in Manhattan, † 18 December 1985) was an American archaeologist and Bauforscherin. She was a pioneer of archeology in the region of Commagene in the southeast of Asia Minor and is particularly known for her research at Nemrut Dagi and their advancement of geophysical methods in archaeological research.
Life
Family and Education
Theresa Goell was the daughter of Mary and Jacob Samowitz Goell Goell. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to Brooklyn, where she grew up and went to school. She attended Erasmus High School, then from 1919 to 1921, the Syracuse University and from 1921 to 1923, the Radcliffe College, where she was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society her bachelor's degree.
During her time at Radcliffe College, she married Cyrus Levinthal. They had a son, Jay, and pulled together in 1926 to England to study at the University of Cambridge. Theresa Goell studied art history, archeology and architecture at Newnham College. She received her degree in architecture, but also developed a keen interest in archeology of the Middle East.
1932 were Theresa Goell and Cyrus Levinthal divorce. Jay then lived for two years with an aunt while Theresa Goell went to Jerusalem to work for the American Schools of Oriental Research. She then returned to the United States and lived with her son in New York. She began graduate studies in classical archeology at New York University. Your professors advised her of an academic career from, on the one hand, because it was for women at this time not common, partly because Theresa Goell suffered from severe hearing. So they decided against a doctorate. Since the political unrest in the Middle East did archaeological field research in this region impossible, she worked temporarily as a visual merchandiser and during the Second World War as a technical designer for the United States Navy.
Archaeological work
1946 invited the archaeologist Hetty Goldman, who was known to encourage younger colleagues, Theresa Goell to participate in the excavations at Tarsus in Cilicia. Goell was in the following years to the fixed member of the local excavation team. From Tarsus from her first visit to Nemrut Dagi to a mountain in the still largely unexplored Taurus Mountains, the houses I of Commagene King Antiochus the tomb of. When she tried to apply for a permit for the exploration of the tomb, it turned out that the German historian Friedrich Karl Dörner also planned to begin excavations there. They finally agreed to deny the project together. Goell became the leader of the excavations, while Dörner participated as epigraphists. In return Dörner took over the management of the excavation project in the nearby ancient city of residence Arsameia on Nymphaios, was involved in the Goell as an architect. After an initial survey and some test excavations began in 1954, the first excavation season at Nemrut Dagi. Parallel she continued to work at Tarsus and sparked Hetty Goldman as director of excavations from.
It soon turned out that the exploration of the interior of Nemrut Mountain was hardly possible without taking a serious damage to the archaeological site in purchasing. Goell, which was the preservation of the sanctuary as a cultural monument in the heart, heard at this time of new methods of geophysics, who had found in the study of Etruscan tombs for the first time in archeology use. Goell decided to extend these measures in their project. She won the National Geographic Society as a sponsor and so made the Nemrut project to the first archaeological dig in Turkey, have been applied in the geophysical measurements.
In 1964 Theresa Goell new research in Samosata, an ancient city on the west bank of the Euphrates, on where she also worked with geophysical methods.
In the 1970s worsened Goells health, and she had to restrict the work on their projects. Nevertheless, she tried, in particular to advance work in Samosata, as had already been decided that the city should be flooded for the Ataturk Dam. This delayed the publication of Nemrut Dig the more that was already complicated by the fact that Dörner, who was also in poor health, his part of the documentation could not finish. When Theresa Goells death in 1985 the publications of both projects remained unfinished.
Her estate, in particular their excavation notes and drawings, is managed by the University of Harvard and Radcliffe College in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Honors
1962 Theresa Goell was elected a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute. 1973, at the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic, the Turkish government honored her for her contribution to the study of Turkish history and culture.
Writings (selection )
- Friedrich Karl Dörner and Hans -Gert Bachmann: Arsameia on Nymphaios. The excavations in Hierothesion of Mithradates Kallinikos 1953 to 1956 ( = Istanbul research, volume 23). Berlin 1963.
- The Nemrud Dagh (Turkey) Geophysical Surveys of 1964, In: ., National Geographic Society Research Reports, 1964 Projects. 1969, pp. 61-81.
- Archaeological Excavations Samosata, Turkey, 1967, In: ., National Geographic Society Research Reports, 1967 Projects. 1974, pp. 83-109.
- Nemrud Dagi. The " Hierothesion " of Antiochus I of Commagene. Results of the American excavations, directed by Theresa B. Goell; Edited by Donald H. Sanders, Winona Lake ( Ind.), Eisenbrauns 1996. ISBN 1-57506-015-9