Eleanor Stewart

Eleanor Stewart, born Eleanor Mary Neal at Kingsdon, Somerset, on 4 August 1911, catalogued nearly all the finds from the Early Bronze Age cemetery of Vounous at Bellapais, and her name stands beside her husband's on the 1950 report. She married J. R. B. Stewart on 1 July 1935¹. Before Cyprus she had worked at Tell el-'Ajjul in the winter of 1933-34 under Flinders Petrie¹, and in 1936 she was photographer on Turkish digs, including Kusura under Winifred Lamb².

In 1937 and 1938 the Stewarts excavated 84 rock-cut tombs at Vounous for the British School at Athens, living about eighteen months in the abbot's quarters at Bellapais Abbey. The School gave sponsorship but no money; funds came from Walter Beasley, Stewart's father, Charles Hyde, Charles Marston and the Craven Fund^3,4. Eleanor photographed, arranged the pottery for drawing, and, in her husband's words of November 1946, did "nearly all of the cataloguing of finds". Merrillees says her cataloguing set a new standard in describing the fabrics of the pots¹. Virginia Grace later admired the complete catalogues the Stewarts kept alongside the digging².

In 1939 the finds were shown in London and shared among the sponsors; the British Museum paid 50 pounds for two tomb groups, and others went to the Cyprus Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Institute of Archaeology and Birmingham³. Vounous 1937-38 was published at Lund in 1950 under the names E. and J. Stewart⁵. Robert Merrillees later wrote that her contribution was overlooked: Stewart's 1962 volume on the Swedish Cyprus Expedition has no tribute to her¹. The marriage ended after the move to Sydney in 1947, and she remarried in 1951 or 1952².