Walter Abel Heurtley

Walter Abel Heurtley's argument that the Bichrome Wheel-made pottery found in Cyprus came from Palestine stood until analyses in the 1970s moved its origin to Cyprus. He was born at Ashington, Sussex, on 24 October 1882. He taught at the Oratory School, served in the East Lancashire Regiment, studied at Oxford and joined the British School at Athens in 1921, becoming assistant director and librarian in 1923. He left in 1932, dismissed on financial grounds, and was librarian of the Palestine Department of Antiquities until 1939⁴.

His work was on Macedonia and Greece, and Artzy and her colleagues note that he felt obliged to explain why the Bichrome ware should be taken as mainland and not Cypriot². In a study cited as Heurtley 1938, pages 21-34, he saw Cypriot Painted Ware influence on what he held to be a Palestinian product⁶. In 1939 he wrote that the style was mainland because it was wheel-made when the wheel was little used in Cyprus, and because the Cypriot pieces all came from the east coast; the Cypriot group looked to him like a single consignment made for Cypriot taste². Claire Epstein criticised his stylistic reading, and Artzy, Asaro and Perlman discussed and rejected the Palestinian origin in 1973¹.

Sarah Irving mentions his visit to Cyprus in connection with the Palestine Department³. Heurtley died on 2 January 1955, after retiring to County Kerry⁴.