Bert Hodge Hill

Bert Hodge Hill directed the first organised American excavation on Cyprus: in 1931 a University Museum (Penn) team opened 38 tombs in the Vrysi tou Barba cemetery at Lapithos, with Lucy Talcott, Virginia Grace and the architect Dorothy H. Cox^1,2.

In 1934 George McFadden, an amateur who paid most of the costs, planned to dig a classical seaside site. The University Museum sought displayable objects, and Hill, a former Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, was brought in, in the words quoted by Davis and Stewart, "to provide a professional veneer". He obtained the permit from the colonial government. In a letter of 8 February 1934 he warned the Museum's director not to expect many well-preserved finds at an exposed city site³. Costello calls him the "titular director" of the Kourion mission and says he employed the "trench and peel" method to expose public buildings quickly⁴. Young and Young record that the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates was excavated under Hill's general supervision, with McFadden the principal excavator⁸. Stanley Price notes that John Hilton, the first Director of Antiquities, encouraged licit excavations "such as B.H. Hill's project at Curium"⁵.

On 1 June 1934 Hill was allowed to examine the gymnasium decree stele in the Episkopi mukhtar's house and copied it from a tracing; his notebook also holds the Eustolios mosaic inscriptions⁶. Megaw's 1954 report credits him with identifying a statue from the Salamis gymnasium as Nemesis⁹.

The Curium Expedition, with Hill as Director, funded Porphyrios Dikaios's excavation and publication of Sotira. Dikaios's 1961 volume calls Hill "the late Dr. B. H. Hill"⁷.