Elizabeth Denny Pierce Blegen (June 26, 1888 – September 21, 1966) was an American archaeologist, educator and writer. She excavated at sites in Greece and Cyprus, contributed reports on archaeological discoveries in Greece to the American Journal of Archaeology from 1925 to 1952, and was involved in several organisations promoting women's professional advancement in Greece and the United States.
Early life and education
Elizabeth Denny Pierce, known as 'Libbie', was born on June 26, 1888, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania to Flora McKnight and William Lemmex Pierce. She attended Vassar College from 1906 to 1910, and in 1912 she obtained an MA in Latin, with a thesis on the intellectual life of Gaius Asinius Pollio, a Roman consul (40 BC) and historian.
Academic career
In her first year at Vassar, Pierce met Ida Thallon, who was to have a profound influence on her life and work. Thallon was a professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies, who taught Pierce Greek and Latin as a freshman. It is not known exactly when the two women formed a romantic relationship, but when Pierce returned to Vassar to teach art history in 1915 after leaving for graduate work at Columbia University, she and Thallon started living in adjacent rooms in Davison House on campus, and by the late 1910s, they were known to their families and friends as a couple.
From 1915 until 1922, Pierce taught Art History at Vassar and worked as an assistant curator at Vassar's Art Gallery. She was granted her PhD from Columbia in 1922. Her PhD dissertation continued her work from her Master's on Pollio. She travelled to Greece with Thallon in 1921, a trip which inspired her to enroll in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA).
Pierce attended ASCSA from 1922 to 1923 where she became friends with the school's director, Bert Hodge Hill, and archaeologist Carl Blegen, who taught prehistory and general topography classes at the school. Pierce and Blegen's friendship quickly turned into romance and Blegen proposed marriage; Pierce initially accepted but then broke off the engagement as she did not wish to end her relationship with Thallon. Pierce returned to the United States and spent the spring of 1924 working with Gisela Richter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Meanwhile, a plan was formed by Blegen, Pierce, and Hodge Hill (who appears to have had unreciprocated romantic feelings for Blegen) that Hodge Hill and Thallon would marry at the same time as Pierce and Blegen, and the four would live together; Thallon agreed on condition that she and Pierce would continue to travel and spend time together away from their husbands, and the two couples married in 1924.
Archaeological career and life in Athens
The four archaeologists, who referred to themselves as "the Family", "the quartet", and "the Pro Par" (short for "Professional Partnership"), had a strong and interconnected relationship both professionally and personally. Thallon Hill and Pierce Blegen often worked together on excavations, cataloguing materials and publishing findings from excavations. These included Carl Blegen's excavations at Prosymna (1927–1928), where Pierce Blegen studied and published the finds of jewellery; Troy (1932–1938); and Pylos, where Pierce Blegen, assisted by Thallon Hill, directed the excavation of a tholos tomb ("Tholos III") at Kato Englianos near the 'Palace of Nestor' (1939), and of the southwestern part of the palace and part of the nearby lower town (1954–56, 1958–62). The two also worked together on Hodge Hill's excavations at Lapithos (Cyprus) and Corinth, where they catalogued new finds in collaboration with Elizabeth Van Buren, a specialist in terracottas. During her first year of marriage, Pierce Blegen also taught sculpture classes at ASCSA.
Beginning in 1925 and continuing until 1952, Pierce Blegen authored "News Items from Athens" and "Archaeological Discoveries from Greece", regular contributions to the American Journal of Archaeology reporting on new archaeological finds. Archaeologist Lucy Shoe Merritt described these reports in her personal correspondence (May 4, 1997) as "the results of close, careful understanding, first-hand observation and discussion with the excavators whom she grew to know so well and who admired and trusted her with their latest discoveries and thoughts about them [the excavations]".