Letter from Merillees to Schaeffer on materials found at KnossosRobert Stuart Merrillees

40 Rosedale Road, Gordon, N.S.W. 19th August, 1961.

Dear Professor Schaeffer,

I have long intended to write and thank you for the greetings you have sent me in your letters to Professor Stewart, and also acquaint you with the progress which has been made in the preparation of the material from your excavations at Vounous. But no time seemed suitable until the present moment, when I find myself in a better position to review the events of the recent past.

We spent the first four months of this year in Cyprus. There was much work to be done in the Cyprus Museum, for not only did it contain pottery from Professor Stewart's excavations at Vasilia and Ayia Paraskevi, still to be catalogued, but we discovered a large number of objects from your own excavations, which had to be recorded. Although Professor Stewart himself had catalogued the Vounous material in Paris in 1959, he was obliged,because of the great amount of work, to delegate to me the task of recording the objects from Vounous in the Cyprus Museum. This was contrary to his usual practice, as he has wisely sought in the past to maintain consistency in his records by cataloguing all objects himself. Although I was not properly prepared for this undertaking, I derived a lot of value from it. The material has greatly increased our knowledge of certain important tomb-groups, and added further details to those already well represented.

But our most notable discoveries were an almost complete set of the in situ plans of your Vounous tombs, and a Notebook kept by Dr. Dikaios during your excavations, containing stratigraphical descriptions and tomb measurements. Neither of these valuable sources had been at my disposal when writing a description of your " dig ", which I submitted as an Honours thesis in 1959. The great increases in our information would have necessitated a complete re-writing of my essay, had I not been leaving the University's employment at the end of this year, and been in a position to publish it under my own name.

My position as Research Assistant in the University is an appointment which has to be renewed annually. On our way back to Australia from Cyprus this year, Professor Stewart informed me that he intended to let my appointment lapse at the end of this year. He told me that he was re-organising the Department of Archaeology, and thought that it was time I stood on my own two feet, and set off overseas on my own. According to University Regulations, my duties are to assist the Head of Department and members of staff on research projects : but they do not entail responsibility for the final preparation or eventual publication of the research work undertaken on behalf of these people. I wish to make my position quite clear to you, as I would not like you to misconstrue my motives for the action I have outlined below.

The Vounous objects sent from the Cyprus Museum to Australia are now at " Mount Pleasant ", Professor Stewart's house at Bathurst, and have not yet been catalogued. I live at home in Sydney, and for personal reasons concerning our family, and my relations with Professor Stewart, I declined to go up to Bathurst to work there on the material from Vounous. My refusal does not mean that I am unwilling to carry out the job - in fact I would be glad to see the preparation completed - and I have emphasised this point to Professor Stewart. Should the Vounous objects be brought down from Bathurst to Sydney, I would be only too happy to catalogue them … continues