Under the Mediterranean: Memories and Legacy of Honor Frost

In the concluding part of a panel discussion on the first day of the 2017 Honor Frost Foundation Conference on Mediterranean Maritime Archaeology, panelists and members of the audience share personal memories of Honor Frost and assess her legacy.

The chair first invites characteristic memories of working and diving with Frost across the Mediterranean. Panelists recall diving with her off Ustica in Sicily in 1996 when she received the Golden Trident award and helped establish the Punta Gavazzi underwater itinerary, singing after a day's diving at Tyre with the team of Jean-Yves Empereur, and her insistence on diving in rough seas two kilometres off Byblos. Contributions from the floor follow. John Curtis recalls the 1972 and 1973 seasons at Marsala in Sicily and the support provided to the project by Dr Alagna and by a member of the Whitaker-Ingham family on Motya. An former Inspector of Underwater Antiquities in Israel describes persuading Frost to wear a buoyancy compensator at Tantura in the early 1980s, and Ehud Galili recounts how a stone anchor recovered in Israel, bearing an Egyptian inscription and Egyptian sand, supported Frost's argument against Alessandra Nibbi that Egyptians sailed on the open sea. Laina Wylde Swiny recalls meeting Frost in 1965 on Peter Throckmorton's project near Taranto, visiting her house on Welbeck Street in London, and later hosting her in Nicosia at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute to discuss anchors. Further contributors describe Frost diving with Frédéric Dumas on the Madrague de Giens wreck in 1977 and a cold-weather picnic in the English countryside.

In the second half, panelists and audience members reflect on Frost's legacy: her role in establishing scientific methodology in underwater archaeology, her insistence on publishing conference proceedings such as TROPIS, and the scholarships funded by the Honor Frost Foundation. Audience contributions recall diving with Frost and Gerhard Kapitän at a submerged Neolithic site at Sozopol in Bulgaria, Patrick Baker on the human connection in her book Under the Mediterranean, her overnight instructions to a young excavator at Nafplion on how to measure an anchor, and her early work at Cape Gelidonya as a female pioneer in the field.