Alan Wace

Alan John Bayard Wace (13 July 1879 in Cambridge, England – 9 November 1957, in Athens, Greece) was an English archaeologist.^[1][2]

Wace was educated at Shrewsbury School and Pembroke College, Cambridge.^[3] He was director of the British School at Athens (1914-1923), Deputy Keeper in the Department of Textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum (1924-1934), the second Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at University of Cambridge (1934-1944) and professor at the Farouk I University in Egypt (1943-1952).

Among Wace's field projects were those at Sparta, Mycenae, Troy, Thessaly, Corinth, and Alexandria. Along with Carl Blegen, Wace carried out important work on the decipherment of Linear B tablets.

Works

• Prehistoric Thessaly (1912).
• The nomads of the Balkans : an account of life and customs among the Vlachs of northern Pindus(1913).
• Excavations at Mycenae (1923).
• Chamber tombs at Mycenae (1932).
• Mycenae, an Archaeological History and Guide (1949).
• A Companion to Homer (1962).
• The Marlborough Tapestries (reprinted 1968).

Necrology

• Carl Blegen, "Alan John Bayard Wace (1879–1957)", American Philosophical Society Yearbook (1958), 162–71.
• Sinclair Hood, ‘Alan John Bayard Wace’, Gnomon 30 (1958), 158–9.
• http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/features/history/staff_obituaries/textiles/wace/index.html

References

1. David Gill, ‘Wace, Alan John Bayard (1879–1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 1 June 2007
2. • F. H. Stubbings, "Alan John Bayard Wace, 1879–1957", Proceedings of the British Academy, 44 (1958), 263–80.
3. "Wace, Alan John Bayard (W898AJ)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.