1948

Kourion Excavations.

15 November, 1948Dear Fro:

There are various odds and ends of news, so the time for another letter seems to have come around. I was very glad to receive yours of the 4th, with the terms of Fales' grant. That seems to leave plenty of leeway.

My chief news is a decision rather than anything out of the editorship of the AJA as I have decided to resign. I have been writing a letter to that effect in a few days, while you will be pleased. I hate to give it up in many ways: it does put me in a very influential position in the trade, and I would never be able to do any serious work of my own as I long as I hold the editorship. I enjoy being an influence on the other hand. I realize that it is quite clear that I couldn't run the journal satisfactorily and it is what brought about my decision. I had forgotten the affairs of the Institute, but I will hope to keep up a much better relationship with them. This short season at Kourion has almost stearned all publication before I had to make up my mind whether to be an anxious to keep my will indicate my thoroughly familiar with it and I have finally taken on the new site: there is a fringe in the archaeologist affairs.

While I was away digging, after having been involved in the work for them, extraordinary feeling of being very heavy demands on my time. I have an extraordinary feeling of relief at getting deeply involved in the new site, the decision to get on with the more still busy, but my life should be a better job of the things I do. I am now thoroughly one able to do a better job, and I will be busy, and I will be able to do.

I am on my last week at Bamboula and my next to last in Cyprus. It has been namely a very satisfactory season in terms of what I expected it to be. I have been able to throw a good deal of light on some aspects of the problematic position of the site, and will certainly be a much better publication of the relatively few individual finds of interest, but I didn't expect any Mycenaean pot, and one of the late Bronze Age evidence on one time): "I have been a pretty good show." The latter are really quite interesting and make a pretty stratigraphic complicated with the sort of thing I say pleasure. I have been to make the most incredibly complicated copying, in the earlier wall has now broken down up now. In the 16th-14th centuries, there was an extensive settlement. I have had a pleasure of the earlier dwelling, and I am still struggling with the fortifications, but which must have been what I hoped for at one time).

I knew from my earlier work here that the period of the settlement was rebuilt in the Late Bronze Age. I also knew that the earlier wall has now broken down into one of the 7th century B.C. But the earlier wall also has developed two periods, and we have found traces of a big chunk of a still earlier wall, and it was hard-pan turns out to be the sandstone, put down in the 7th century for a road-bed, all related to the fortifications. This is turning up outside the fortifications. Add to this that another heavy wall...

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