Ancient CyprusAncient Cyprus

Cataloguer · Scholar

David Moore Robinson

1880–1958 · United States

Johns Hopkins classical archaeologist, first-named author of the 1930 Royal Ontario Museum vase catalogue that carries most of Toronto's published Cypriot pottery.

Biography

Most of the Cypriot pottery in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto appeared in a catalogue of 1930 whose first-named author was D. M. Robinson, with C. G. Harcum and John Henry Iliffe1,4. It was A Catalogue of the Greek Vases in the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, issued by the University of Toronto Press. The entries are not attributed to individual authors in the sources.

David Moore Robinson was born at Auburn, New York, on 21 September 1880. He taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1905 to 1947, later moved to the University of Mississippi, and died at Oxford, Mississippi, on 2 January 19585. He is best known for his work at Olynthus in Greece. George H. McFadden, publishing a tomb from the Ayios Ermoyenis cemetery at Kourion in 1946, cited Robinson's information on similar amphoras from Olynthus3.

Robinson is also named in the preface to Terracotta Figurines from Kourion in Cyprus (1955), where J. H. Young and S. H. Young thank him as one of the scholars who examined many of the objects in Cyprus and shared his wide knowledge2.

Life and work

  1. 1930
    Co-authored with C. G. Harcum and J. H. Iliffe the catalogue of the Greek vases in the Royal Ontario Museum, which carries the bulk of the museum's published Cypriot pottery (Early Bronze Age to Cypro-Archaic).

    TorontoKarageorghis 2002

  2. by 1946
    Told George McFadden that similar amphoras, then unpublished, had been found at Olynthus.

    McFadden 1946

  3. by 1955
    Credited in the Kourion figurines volume as one of several scholarly visitors who, while the Penn team was in Cyprus, examined many of the objects at first hand and shared his knowledge.

    KourionYoung & Young 1955

Connections

3 people
George H. McFaddenJohn Henry (Harry) IliffeC. G. HarcumDavid Moore Robinson
Scholarship

Scholarship

Sources

  1. 1.V. Karageorghis (2002). “Nouvelles archéologiques. Cypriote Antiquities in Foreign Museums”. Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes 32, 3-4.
  2. 2.John Howard Young, Suzanne Halstead Young (1955). Terracotta Figurines from Kourion in Cyprus. Philadelphia, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.
  3. 3.George H. McFadden (1946). “A Tomb of the Necropolis of Ayios Ermoyenis at Kourion”. American Journal of Archaeology 50, 449-489.
  4. 4.D. M. Robinson, C. G. Harcum, J. H. Iliffe (1930). A Catalogue of the Greek Vases in the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
  5. 5.“David Moore Robinson”. Wikipedia. Online
  6. 6.“David Moore Robinson (Q1175734)”. Wikidata. Online
  7. 7.Harvard Art Museums (Fogg Museum) online collection, reg. 1960.260, 1960.261, 1960.262.