1948

Curium Excavations, Episkopi, Limassol, Cyprus.

10 March 1948Dear Fro:

Thanks very much for your letter of February 25th. I understand perfectly that you would not be able to approach the Philosophical Society for a grant without first determining and specifying its use. I understand too that it might be easier to obtain the grant for excavations which are not going on at the present time. This is unfortunate as funds are badly needed for the work in hand and a little discouraging in view of all that has been done at Apollo before the war and more recently last Fall. Any additional funds, of course, would be used to make possible essential work in the field with view to publication. We now face the question whether, owing to inadequate funds, we are to give up the work there which has been going forward with such promising results, in order to excavate another group of buildings on a far more expensive site.

Any program within our means which can be made to work and which has Mr. Hill's endorsement and your approval and Pete's would be absolutely satisfactory to me. I am quite content to dig any site if we can see our way through on the Funds we have to finishing the job. The sanctuary of Apollo was not a choice taken on the initiative of anyone of us last Fall, but was a choice, I think, which appeared to be prompted by what we all thought might bring most credit to the University Museum. As I have already explained, when I asked for a budget of a minimum $15,000. in my letter to Mrs. Godfrey of last June, it was not with the idea of clearing the sanctuary on that amount. During the last fiscal year when our budget confined us to work toward the publication of Curium finds, I wrote that it would require an additional $1,000. for each month of excavation working with a force of 30 men. This has turned out in practice to be a slight underestimate. To carry out the program as agreed upon I asked for a minimum budget of $18,000. As it is not possible, however, to keep 30 men on one site when work of a delicate kind is going on, as occasion offered, to work on Pete's site of the palace on the bluff of Curium. This is the only building there which could be cleaned without a considerable increase in our budget. We brought the excavation of the stadium to completion last Fall by working in this way. It was our plan that Pete's young … continues