Ellen Herscher

Paul Åström thanked "Ms. Ellen Herscher" among the students in his seminars at the University of Gothenburg for their contributions and critical approach, in a volume of 1972²⁶. In 1974 she was listed as "Ellen Herscher, B. A." of Göteborg University among those who worked on the Medelhavsmuseet exhibition Cypern: motsättningarnas ö²⁷. The Sotira volume's bibliography lists her paper "A Potter's Error: Aspects of Middle Cypriote III", in the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus for 1972, pp. 22-33¹².

Vassos Karageorghis thanked "Miss Ellen Herscher" in 1973 for information on items in the Pierides Collection at Larnaca²⁸. He also named her, with "Miss Jenny Webb" and other graduate students, among those who took part in the 1974 campaign at Kition¹³. After the Turkish invasion of 1974, the American embassy in Nicosia reported in January 1975 that the effects of "FY-74 student Ellen Herscher" were stored in two crates at Limassol port, awaiting shipment to Philadelphia²⁹. They sailed on 7 February³⁰.

In "New Light from Lapithos" (1975), Herscher wrote that Karageorghis "first introduced me to the earth of Cyprus"¹. The paper surveyed the tombs opened at Lapithos-Vrysi tou Barba in 1931 by a University Museum team under the general direction of Bert Hodge Hill¹. She studied the material by permission of Rodney S. Young of the University Museum and Kyriakos Nicolaou of the Cyprus Museum¹. She dated the tombs from Early Cypriote II to the end of Middle Cypriote III, and noted that the 74 bronzes of Tomb 804 were a quarter of all the bronzes of the season¹. A reviewer in 1977 called the paper "clear and succinct" on the pottery forms, potters' marks, White Painted painters and intersite relationships³¹. Her 1978 dissertation, The Bronze Age Cemetery at Lapithos, examined the cemetery²⁵. The Penn Museum still records the tombs under her numbers, as in "Tomb 2A = Herscher Tomb 802A"³². She later wrote "Lapithos 1931: An unofficial ASCSA excavation in Cyprus" for the American School's newsletter Ákoue in 2007³³.

For J. B. Pritchard's Sarepta (1975) she wrote "The Imported Pottery", pp. 85-96³⁴. Patricia M. Bikai cited a piece there that Herscher dated to the tenth century³⁵.

In November 1980 G. Roger Edwards wrote that "Dr. Ellen Herscher" would publish the objects in the University Museum's collections from sites other than its own excavations in Cyprus, working on a commuting schedule from Washington³⁶. A museum list gave her 290 such objects, among them 130 from Ayia Paraskevi and 40 from the Richter Collection³⁶. The museum's allocations named her for both the Cypriot collection and the Lapithos cemetery, and its publication list assigned her the Lapithos Bronze Age tombs and Anna D. Sophocles the Iron Age tombs³⁶.

In July 1982 Herscher wrote to Edwards that all research for the collection book was complete and the manuscript should be ready by the end of the year, adding that Karageorghis was "very anxious to see it finished"³⁶. In November 1984 she was finishing the excavation report on the Phaneromeni pottery and hoped then to return to the "picture book"³⁶. The museum's director agreed to fund photography for it, scheduled for January 1986³⁶. Edwards also asked her to return the Bronze Age Lapithos records she had borrowed, writing that "These are official Museum records and should never leave the Museum"³⁶.

At Episkopi-Phaneromeni, the Kent State University excavation of James R. Carpenter, Carpenter thanked "Dr. Herscher, our pottery expert" and credited her 1976 paper with first recognising Blue Core ware³⁷. In her own paper of 1981, Herscher argued that the four Kent State seasons made it possible "to revise fundamentally the accepted view of the Cypriote Bronze Age" by showing that the area failed to adopt White Painted ware for local manufacture in the Middle Cypriote period³⁷. She dated the cemetery to Middle Cypriote and the settlement to Late Cypriote IA, and found that wares once all called "Red Polished" formed a sequence, which she traced through fabric and method of manufacture³⁷. The evidence was "still scanty", she wrote, but it "at least suggests the possibility" that political divisions went with the cultural ones³⁷. The volume's introduction says that, as Herscher shows, the problem of Red Polished ware "is much more complex" than a marker of the Early Bronze Age³⁷.

In "Beyond Regionalism" (1991) she wrote that excavations across Cyprus had shown "regionalism was the norm before the Late Bronze Age"³⁸. She observed that almost all recognised intra-island imports were small closed vessels, mostly flasks or bottles, suggesting containers for traded substances³⁸. The evidence, she judged, was "still insufficient to develop a fully reliable chronology"³⁸. She argued, against Philip, that Drab Polished ware was "a long lived, independent and sophisticated technology", according to a later Edinburgh thesis, whose author called these studies, Philip's and hers, "invaluable"³⁹. The 1991 chronicle of Cypriot excavations reports that "Ellie Herscher" studied the pottery of the 1990 survey and rescue dig at Sanida, which showed occupation from the end of Middle Cypriot, no later than Late Cypriot IA⁴⁰.

The sources disagree on her Fulbright years: the Sotira volume says she held two Fulbright Fellowships at CAARI "in 1990 and 1991" to prepare the Kaminoudhia pottery for publication¹². The Fulbright directory lists one grant, August 1991 to June 1992, as an independent scholar hosted by the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute⁴¹. Stuart Swiny writes that the co-directors enlisted her expertise "to anchor the ceramic studies"¹². With Swiny and George Rapp she edited Sotira Kaminoudhia: An Early Bronze Age Site in Cyprus (2003), and wrote the ceramics chapter and, with Swiny, the cemetery and chronology chapters¹². In it she saw "strong continuity from the Philia Phase" and judged that the region "appears not to have developed" real Black Polished ware¹². David Frankel reviewed the volume in 2004⁴².

In December 1980 she attended an American Association of Museums meeting on the Cultural Property Implementation Act as AFFA's representative⁴³. In 1981 Karen D. Vitelli introduced her as the newly appointed chairperson of the AFFA Action Committee, "a professional archaeologist with a long-time interest in and concern for the effects of the illicit traffic in antiquities"⁴⁴. She wrote "Letter from Washington" reports for the Journal of Field Archaeology in 1981 and 1982, and by 1985-86 ran its section "The Antiquities Market"^45,46,47. In Archaeology she wrote on the Semitic Museum's Cesnola collection in 1997 and on museum acquisition policies "mired in scandal and controversy" in 1998^48,49. Her 2001 essay was titled "Destroying the Past in Order to 'Save' It: Collecting Antiquities from Cyprus"⁵⁰.

Karageorghis answered her 2000 Archaeology piece on the Metropolitan Museum's collection of Luigi Palma di Cesnola. He wrote that some scholars gave "a lesson of morality" to Cypriots who, quoting her, "rather than demand the collection's return... have actually provided financial support for the new Met installation and catalog"¹⁴.

By 2002 Herscher was a CAARI trustee and an assistant editor of CAARI News, and she became Vice-President of the board⁵¹. She headed the search committee for a new director⁵¹. She was to lead the Archaeological Institute of America's tour of Cyprus in 2004, one of tours held once every three years⁵¹. She was Vice President in 2005 and still in autumn 2010, and that year's autumn issue of CAARI News shows her, for CAARI, at the opening of the Smithsonian exhibition "Cyprus: Crossroads of Civilizations"^25,52. The 2017 report says she taught archaeology at Cornell and the University of Minnesota²⁴.

In 2013 she wrote on "J.R. Stewart's ceramic classification: lessons from 50 years of use"⁵³. Reviewing Jennifer M. Webb and Frankel's Ambelikou Aletri in 2015, she called it "an inspirational example of what can be achieved by the study of old excavations", but found that "No evidence seems to support" their suggestion of a domestic community at the site⁵⁴.