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Alan Wace[edit]

Alan Wace (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

As of 4 May 2024, 04:05 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. An FAC coordinator will be responsible for closing the nomination.
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Nominator(s): UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:35, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a leading light of Mycenaean archaeology, and one whose full story has only relatively recently come to light. Wace has long been known for his excavations at Mycenae, particularly his work on the various fancifully-named tombs like "Atreus", "Aegisthus" and "Clytemnestra", and less widely for his spat with the formidable Arthur Evans. Though labelled as a "heretic" and drummed out of the British School at Athens, Wace's iconoclastic rejection of the idea that Mycenaean Greece was a dependent province of a Minoan thalassocracy was ultimately proven true and, depending on who you ask, may be the conclusive proof that Greek culture can trace an unbroken line back to the Bronze Age. Less well known until recently was his wartime espionage work: he worked in British intelligence during both World Wars and was a major link in the chain of monitoring and concealing secret agents in the Eastern Mediterranean. The article underwent a GA review by Ealdgyth earlier this year, for which I am much indebted: the inevitable mistakes and infelicities remain entirely my own. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:35, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Gog the Mild[edit]

Recusing to review.

  • "in Thessaly, in Laconia and in Egypt." Do we need "in" three times? It flows better for me if the last two are removed.
  • "moving to the British School at Rome, where he participated in the BSA's excavations at Sparta and in the region of Laconia in southern Greece." Moving to Rome where he participated in digs in Laconia reads oddly.
  • " He worked for the British intelligence services during the war, and excavated with his long-term collaborator Carl Blegen at the prehistoric site of Korakou." He excavated during the war?
    • Yes (1915 and 1916). It wasn't (yet) wartime for Blegen's American employers. I've stuck "During the war" at the start of the sentence to be clear that it governs both clauses. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:57, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in 1909, he was considered as a possible successor to Ashby". Why was that? Did Ashby leave the position, or was it just contingency planning?
    • Added the key detail: Ashby's contract was due to expire in 1911. As it happened, they reappointed him until 1925. Ashby's own ODNB entry says that he was on the rocks in 1909, but the appointment of Eugénie Sellers Strong as his assistant helped him to hold on. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:14, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "shortlisted for the position". I think it would be worth reminding readers what "the position" was.
  • "Wace was ultimately rejected in favour of Dawkins, who toured with Wace following his appointment through the Dodecanese in the summer of 1906 and in 1907, recording inscriptions, collecting embroidered artwork and pursuing Dawkins's interest in modern Greek dialects." A sentence so long you may have confused yourself - the second mention of Dawkins should be 'his'; which I don't think is what you want to say.
  • "throughout the early 1900s". I take that to mean c. 1900-1904; is that what you mean? From the MoS: "Avoid forms such as the 1700s that could refer to ten or a hundred years."
    • Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Not sure of a great fix here (I don't have the articles themselves to be overly precise), so have gone with "throughout the first decade of the 1900s". UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "then proceeded to conduct field survey in search of prehistoric mounds". Either 'a field survey' or 'field surveys'.
    • Not sure about this one (I was using it as a process rather than an event: like "continued to conduct research into...", "continued to practise archaeology..."), but the plural isn't wrong, so I've gone with that. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the results of the work were published as Prehistoric Thessaly". Were "the results" not the artefacts?
    • Partly, but more precisely, the "results" are what they found and what they thought it meant. Particularly in a field survey, that's much more about the distribution of the (usually individually pretty uninteresting) artefacts and the potential sites that can be inferred from it. On a slightly separate note, I remember another FAC where we pushed back against "the artefact was published" as being archaeologist-ese. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the results of which he published alongside Thompson in 1914". What does "alongside" mean? Co-authored? In the same journal?
  • "in the Corinthia". Link Corinthia. And why "the"?
    • It's standard for most of the traditional regions of Greece (as opposed to the administrative units by the same name), particularly when talking about their boundaries in classical times: in particular, the Peloponnese, the Argolid, the Corinthia, the Piraeus (see Google Books here. Linked. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "troop carrier". Consider substituting 'troop ship'.
  • "which was later referred to as the "difficult times"." Is this relevant?
    • I quite like the British understatement, and it's also somewhat relevant that his colleagues recognised he'd had a rough beat, since a major reason why he was given a second term after the war is that they felt he hadn't really had a chance to have proper go at it the first time. I think it's worth the relatively small indulgence of nine words, personally. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Wace installed the first electric lights in the director's house". Again, this seems to be trivia.
  • "In November 1919 ... he left the British legation." Earlier you said "During 1915–1916,[2] Wace was posted to the chancery of the British legation" which I took to mean he left the legation in 1916.
    • Still to do (flagging this for my own benefit): will check the sources to see if I can resolve this one. Not totally clear in the sources, but Gill has him working for the legation after 1916 as well, at least after his return from the troop ship. One assumes he worked for them in the interim as well, just not in the chancery, but given that the whole thing was almost certainly little more than a cover for his espionage work, I'd suggest the fine details are somewhat moot. Added what I can from the sources. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:58, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "He also assisted ..." Of the four people mentioned in the previous sentence, grammar would suggest that "He" is Gill. Whether Gill or - more likely - Wace, perhaps swap He for their name? (Then the next sentence can start with 'He'.)
  • "As a result of political rioting, which took place in Athens at the end of July 1920, Wace opened the hostel of the BSA to women". There were riots - of a political nature, whatever that is - over the BSA's policy towards women? And what does "opened the hostel of the BSA" mean? That they were allowed to stay overnight, as in a modern hostel? If so, perhaps add the link?
    • More or less: in this context, the hostel is more like a student dorm, except that the BSA's students generally stay only for a short period of time. It's not a youth hostel (as in a cheap hotel). The connection between the riots and the women is that previously the BSA had been a male-only place, but Wace successfully made the argument that Athens was a dangerous place to be a female scholar, and so that the BSA should accommodate them as a means of ensuring their safety. With that said, I've found another source that tells the story slightly differently, so this will change. Still to do again. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:34, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Now done. The sources don't quite tell the same story: Hood says that Wace drove the decision and writes of having seen his letter to Thompson on the matter (complaining about the other committee members); Ashmole, as Gill quotes him, says that it was the British Minister, who gave the order in November while Wace was away (at Mycenae?). I don't think there's a contradiction here: to me, the most likely narrative is that the riots kicked off at the end of July, Wace began lobbying the committee to let the women in, but the matter was only finally forced by the minister's intervention in November. Both sources are clear that the rioting was the proximate cause of the change: Ashmole goes into a bit more detail and says that the Minister wanted all UK students in one place in case an evacuation became necessary. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:47, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "who held the necessary permit, to permit them to excavate". Is it possible to avoid using "permit" twice in two words?
    • Certainly: now allow second time.
  • "He also donated £100 (equivalent to £4,273 in 2021) towards the project, to be used for the excavation of the monument known as the Tomb of Aegisthus." How is this relevant to an article on Wace?
    • This is the moment where Wace and Evans break: the excavation is what drives the wedge between them and turns Evans from Wace's supporter to his (really quite bitter) opponent. It's significant that Evans had quite a lot of skin in the game: he expected this excavation to be the slam-dunk that proved his "invasion" theory correct, and was willing to pay generously towards it on that basis, and he ended up badly burned when Wace and Lamb came home having used that money to prove him wrong. It was specifically the excavation of Aegisthus on which the whole issue turned. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, but as you don't provide this detail to a reader it comes across as trivia. I think you need to either explain its relevance in the article or take it out. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:35, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've rephrased to "He also supported the excavation financially, donating £100 towards the excavation of the monument known as the Tomb of Aegisthus". I think that gets across the importance of the detail without going into excess: the following paragraph really sets out why Evans wanted to put his money towards the project. I did start writing "Evans believed that the Aegisthus tomb would prove later than Atreus", but I can't find that detail actually written down anywhere: it's inferable from his statements in his 1929 book that Atreus and Clytemnestra are the oldest, but he doesn't actually try to give a specific date for Aegisthus, probably because there was no good counter-argument to Wace's dating of it). UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:02, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "had maintained fundamentally autochthonous". I am not sure that is grammatical. Perhaps 'had been maintained fundamentally autochthonous'? Or 'had remained fundamentally autochthonous'?
  • "Shaft Graves period". Why the upper-case initials?
  • "when the School's committee ... influential members of the Committee". Perhaps standardise the case of the initial lettr of C/committee.
  • "managing committee ... management committee". Similar.
  • "when the School's committee". Is this the managing/ management committee? If so, it may be worth saying so at first mention in the section.
  • "the School's committee ... the BSA's London committee". Is there any way of succinctly indicating what level of authority, if any, either of these committee's had over the other?
    • I'm not sure it worked like that: at any rate, I haven't ever seen anyone set out the "paper" relationship between the two. However, archaeology is a small world and, particularly in those days, personal relationships and authority counted for a lot (as Evans attests throughout his own career), so getting too legalistic about it might be missing the point. One assumes that the London committee were somehow "above" the Athens one, but whether they actually had the power/inclination to overturn the latter's appointments, I don't know. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "but needed to remain in Britain following the death of his brother-in-law". Why?
    • Presumably Wace was the executor of the estate (acting for his wife?), or else giving practical and/or emotional support to his relatives. Death creates a lot of admin, after all. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we don't know why it is relevant, I am not sure that it is. Personally I would take it out. But perhaps 'but wished to remain in Britain for personal reasons'> (I am gritting my teeth here. :-) )
I'm afraid I must dissent here: it's relevant because it narrows down the options as to why Wace didn't get the job. In particular, it shows us that Wace, not the museum, made the decision: I've amended slightly to but refused it to take care of family commitments in Britain, following the death of his brother-in-law (this does share "family commitments" with the source, but I don't think we can rephrase that without breaking WP:TSI). It would be nice if we knew more, but we don't, and shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Compare "he declined it due to poor health": even if we don't know exactly what the health condition was, it's still worth saying that there was one. UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:07, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "collection of these objects". Does this refer to "Greek embroideries" or textiles in general? I assume that the former is a subset of the latter.
    • The latter: I read "the Greek embroideries" as the logical antecedent here, but is there a clearer phrasing you can think of? UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wace's interest in and collection of embroidery, were these contemporary?
  • "the book was still considered a standard work". "was" or is?
    • Boldly gone for "is" (strictly speaking, that information is only up to date as of 2015, but that seems clunky to stick in body text on such a small point). UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "a visiting appointment at the University of Toronto." Are the dates of this known?
  • "He also conducted undercover work based at the British Embassy." I don't see support for this in the source given. I think you may be misreading it.
    • I'm going with Alan Wace, a leading classical archaeologist who had for some years been excavating the Bronze Age palace at Mycenae, where he was refining Schliemann’s earlier work, asked for Martin’s presence in Cairo where he was attached to the British Embassy as an undercover agent. His arrival there followed soon after.... As I read it, the bolded he can only refer to Wace: otherwise, Wace was asking for Robertson to be present in Cairo while Robertson was already present in Cairo. Hm... actually, the tenses are difficult here, aren't they: could be "he [Robertson] was [after Wace's request] attached...". Gone with something a bit vaguer ("to assist with his espionage work"). UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's what I was seeing. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:27, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Wace was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in 1948". Just in 1948, or from 1948?
    • Gill only has As a member of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton in 1948. Doing a bit of digging, it turns out that it was just 1948: added the specific dates. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "His excavations in 1952 discovered the first Linear B tablets". Could we have a brief in line explanation of what Linear B is? And possibly of "tablets" in this case.
    • We now have one; I hope it makes "tablets" close enough to self-explanatory. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps link to clay tablet? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:30, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "During this period". Which period?
  • "Wace experienced poor cardiovascular health over a period of several years." Is it known which ones they were?
    • Gill just has "a heart condition": I thought that Rachel Hood might have known, as she clearly leant on Wace's daughter Lisa when writing her bit of the book, but she doesn't mention anything about it. Nobody else seems to know anything about it, though all the obits know about the final heart attack. Going to have to draw a blank here, I think. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "died of another on 9 November 1957, at his home in Athens". At last mention he had moved to Cyprus.
    • Yes, he had, hadn't he? His PBA obituary says that he "later" moved to a flat in Athens, so added that in, though it's pretty unhelpful. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and was also the honorand of a special edition of the Annual of the British School at Athens to commemorate his fifty years in archaeology." Perhaps give the year of publication?

That's it from me. Classy stuff. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks as ever, Gog. Mostly sorted without a hitch, but one or two bits above. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking good. Two come backs of substance and a suggestion. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:38, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - I’m somewhat indisposed at the moment but will be able to get to them after this next week. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:18, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Back to you now -- thanks as ever. UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:07, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • File:Prehistoric_Thessaly;_being_some_account_of_recent_excavations_and_explorations_in_north-eastern_Greece_from_Lake_Kopais_to_the_borders_of_Macedonia_(1912)_(14595001048).jpg: is a more specific tag available?
  • File:Mycenaean_figurine_of_female_deities_and_child_at_the_National_Archaeological_Museum_of_Athens_on_October_6,_2021.jpg needs a tag for the original work. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:56, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikkimaria: Thanks as ever: done on the figurine. Pace Flickr, I'm not sure the Sesklo image is PD, looking again. It's a 1912 publication, so fine for the US, but the UK rule is 70 years PMA: I can't find Thompson's date of death, but Wace died in 1957, so by my reckoning that makes it technically copyrighted in the UK until 2027. I think that means we need to replace it? UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:54, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it's fine in the US, at worst it could be uploaded locally? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea -- I've done that. I remember having a hard time finding good images to illustrate this section. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Choliamb[edit]

  • Re the Sesklo image discussed above: the plan published by Wace and Thomas is just a simplied verion of the plan in Tsountas's Αι προϊστορικαί ακροπόλεις Διμηνίου και Σέσκλου, so if all you want is a plan of Sesklo, you could use Tsountas's original plan without any copyright worries. But I'm not sure why you want a plan of Sesklo in this article at all. Wace didn't work there, and the information about Sesklo in Prehistoric Thessaly is essentially just a summary of Tsountas's detailed excavation report. If you want an image from the book to illustrate Wace's work in Thessaly, a better choice might be one of the brightly colored plates of Neolithic pottery from sites like Tsangli and Rakhmani. I'm thinking in particular of this one: File:Prehistoric Thessaly; being some account of recent excavations and explorations in north-eastern Greece from Lake Kopais to the borders of Macedonia (1912) (14778615801).jpg. It has three advantages, I think: (1) more visual interest than the plan of Sesklo; (2) shows material from sites where Wace actually excavated; and (3) specifically illustrates a sentence already in the article: "The archaeologist Helen Waterhouse attributes Wace's later specialism in prehistory to the enthusiasm for Neolithic pottery he developed in Thessaly." This image gives readers a chance to understand the attraction. (Whatever image you choose, you will want to correct the book title in the image caption.)
  • You mentioned that you had trouble finding images for the early career section of the article. If you don't like my suggestion regarding the pottery plate above, or you want another image to supplement it, perhaps consider a photo of the Menelaion near Sparta (c:Category:Menelaion)? It's a picturesque site and Wace's many contributions to Laconian archaeology are often overlooked because of the shadow cast by his more famous later work at Mycenae. This was also one of the few times in his career when he was not focused on prehistoric stuff, so it provides a little balance.
    • Some good ones there: personally, I prefer the pottery -- there's something nice about it being as close as it can be to Wace's own hand, though bearing Stubbings' judgement of his artistic skills in mind, I suspect it wasn't actually him holding the paintbrush! I'm not sure there's a particularly good place to put an additional image without crowding things. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:11, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article currently says that Wace "collaborated on studies of the church of Hagia Irene and of the base of the Obelisk of Theodosius, both in Istanbul." This is a little misleading, I think. Wace did not collaborate on the study of Ayia Irini itself: all of the work on the church proper was done by the architect W. S. George (who also, incidentally, provided drawings and watercolors for some of the illustrations in Prehistoric Thessaly). Wace's only contribution to the volume, co-authored by A. M. Woodward, was an appendix discussing the Early Byzantine statue base of of the charioteer Porphyrios, which at that time was standing in the atrium of the church. So I think this sentence would be more accurate if it said "collaborated on studies of the statue base of the charioteer Porphyrius and the base of the Obelisk of Theodosius, both in Istanbul." (The Porphyrios base has some iconographical similarities to the obelisk base, so it's no accident that Wace published on both of them.) George's book with the appendix by Wace and Woodward does not seem to be available on line, but you can get the bibliographical details from the most thorough publication of the Porphyrios base, that by the Byzantinist A. A. Vasiliev in DOP 4 (1948) 29–49 (see esp. p. 33 and n. 12), available via JSTOR and IA. Then the appendix by Wace and Woodward could be added to the co-authored section of the list of works.
    • As ever, I am indebted to your research skills and generosity in providing such a good paper trail -- added as suggested. I wonder if George was the one behind the Tsangli potsherds? The book only says the image is after a drawing by him. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:11, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 15:21, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SC
  • A marker for now, but will be here shortly. - SchroCat (talk) 08:01, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "best known for": this is a phrase that has been questioned on the grounds of POV before (unpleasantly and vehemently in one case). It may be worth tweaking to avoid having to deal with that problem
  • Link (even if it's to Wiktionary) for "schema", given it's not a common word?
  • "He went up to Cambridge": 'went up to' is idiomatic and one that confuses the colonials, so normal, rather than Oxbridgian, language may be better here.

Done down to the Director of the BSA; more to come. – SchroCat (talk) 16:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Finishing off:

  • 'which was later referred to as the "difficult times"': I think it may be best to identify who referred to it as this.
    • Done (Hood isn't too specific, but it's a safe enough bet that the term was used among her husband's contemporaries). UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:12, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "when the School's managing committee ... preferring the School to focus": these are the only two uses of school with a capital S outside the full formal name. The MOS is largely incoherent on the use of capital letters, but I think consistency means either these or the others are wrong.
  • "Wace spent ten years between 1924 and 1934": Do we need to be told than 1924 to 1934 is ten years?
  • You mention Elizabeth (Lisa) Bayard French is his daughter in the Personal life section, but you don't refer to her accompanying him on excavations, or her doing separate excavations at Mycenae, which is the claim of the last sentence of the lead.

That's my lot. An enjoyable and informative read. - SchroCat (talk) 12:41, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from 750h[edit]

  • Great article, I am in support the nomination. I do have a small concern, though. In reference 107, instead of displaying the name of the website, "search.amphilsoc.org" (the website itself) is shown. It's probably just my personal preference, but I thought I'd mention it.  750h+ | Talk  16:24, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks -- I've filled out that citation to do as you describe. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:41, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kusma[edit]

Will try to review. Just one remark for now: I did stumble a bit over "British School at Athens", which sounds like a brother of The British School in Tokyo; is it possible to gloss this and British School at Rome also in the lead? —Kusma (talk) 17:06, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • This is slightly explained in the body text, but I've now added an EFN to explain what both the BSR and BSA are. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Early life and education: "obtained a First in part one of tripos"/"part two" wouldn't this usually be "Part I"/"Part II"? Also, "obtained a First in part one" is incomprehensible to people unaware of the British undergraduate system
I've expanded to obtained a First, the highest possible grade, in Part I of the tripos examinations: hopefully the right balance of clarity and precision? UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Early academic career: Link Vlach people
  • Director of the British School at Athens: "six slides they had never previously seen: Georg Karo, the director of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, attended the meeting in costume as a fräulein" the colon makes me think that the slides contained photographs of Georg Karo in drag.
    • Is that really compatible with attended the meeting? I don't see any way to read that where Karo isn't in the room, and in costume at the time. UndercoverClassicist T·C 22:00, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • I find the whole anecdote a bit confusing. After reading the source ("scholarly reputations were torn to shreds, and Wace himself gave a brilliant performance") I don't know whether this was just light-hearted fun or whether Wace engineered an opportunity to show off. Back to the colon: I would prefer a full stop, but I can ignore this. —Kusma (talk) 06:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        From other sources, it seems to be purely fun, albeit in a very Oxbridge way -- I think "scholarly reputations were torn to shreds" should be taken with a note of British irony (that is, some eminent scholars flopped tremendously, much to their juniors' amusement, but nobody seriously thought that was a reflection on them as professionals). I'll take a look at this bit and see if I can make it clearer. UndercoverClassicist T·C 08:54, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've added "humorous" and broken the sentence with a full stop instead of the colon: is that any better? UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More later. —Kusma (talk) 20:34, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Victoria and Albert Museum: "disagreements with influential members of the committee, who had disagreed" is there a way to phrase this without using "disagree" twice?
  • Only half of this section is about Wace's time at the V&A.
    • I've shunted the first paragraph (his dismissal from the BSA) into the previous section, and promoted that to L2 to break what was already a very long chunk. Everything in the V&A section is now either from his time at the museum or the immediate background to it. It's not the best section title, but I'm not sure I can think of a better one. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Professorship at Alexandria and retirement: "prehistoric Linear B script" I didn't know that writing could be "prehistoric".
    • Indeed it can (and Linear B is not the oldest Aegean script): Linear B is used only for narrow accounting purposes, and only to write fairly short, simple texts -- while we have writing from the prehistoric Aegean, we don't have history or narrative. You can find the longest continuous narrative in Linear B in the Eritha article -- it's a two-clause sentence. UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:20, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Personal life, character and honours: just to confirm, was Elizabeth French the only child?

A nice article overall. If there's anything I'd like to know more about, it is how he became to work for MI6; was it normal for archeologists (or senior leaders of British institutions abroad) at the time to play such dual roles? It is fine if you don't know. —Kusma (talk) 06:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it was -- though the full story is only coming out in recent years. During both World Wars, almost all of the belligerent powers leant on their archaeologists in Greece for intelligence work -- these were people enmeshed in a neutral or occupied country, who had connections with the locals, spoke the language and were used to living rough in the countryside, and also generally knew their counterparts on the other side. Wace's good friend Blegen was pretty high up in the OSS during the Second World War, for example, while Karo did quite a lot of murky stuff for Germany during the First. See also people like Stanley Casson, Martin Robertson and Alison Frantz, all of whom were in Wace's orbit and ended up in intelligence. There's a book cited called Classical Spies, which mostly covers the American side, but is available on TWL -- basically every American archaeologist of the period makes their way into it somehow. UndercoverClassicist T·C 08:59, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma: I think that's all of these: a few where I'd be grateful for your input on the solution/kludge made so far. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My points were minor and have been addressed. Happy to support. One more thing: I believe Helen Wace should be linked; she seems just about notable enough for a blue link from a glance at her bio, so she could have a red link for the moment. —Kusma (talk) 20:37, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done: she's certainly an interesting character. Hopefully someone (probably yours truly) will be able to pull together enough sources to push the article over the GNG line -- that Cambridge one is certainly a good start. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source review[edit]

Spot-check upon request. Should't Traquair & Wace 1909, Droop 1926, Wace 1923, Wace 1924, Wace, Megaw & Skeat 1959 and Wace & Thompson 1912 have page numbers? Is there a rule for which articles get ISBN and which OCLC? Are "The Tomb of Agamemnon: Mycenae and the Search for a Hero", "The Salonica Campaign of the First World War from an Archaeologist's Perspective: Alan J. B. Wace's Greece Untrodden (1964)" and "First Athenian Memories" a reliable source? Looks like we are mostly working with journal articles, well-cited books or university books here. "Obituary: Frederick Charles Wace M. A." throws a 403 error. I know some people who are archaeologists who might have something to say here, I'll ask them for a few comments off-wiki. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:35, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi -- thanks for sounding out some archaeological expertise; looking forward to hearing it. Comments/replies below:

  • Those sources are only cited in their entirety (for instance, note 18, Traquair and Wace 1909, cites Wace also contributed to a survey of Athens's Byzantine churches, collaborated on studies of the statue base of the charioteer Porphyrius and of the base of the Obelisk of Theodosius, both in Istanbul.: Traquair and Wace is the study. Where a specific passage from them is cited, page numbers are given.
  • Articles for which I could find an ISBN have one; where I couldn't find one or none seems to exist, they have OCLC. Where I couldn't find that, they have OL. Journals have ISSN, where it exists.
  • The Tomb of Agamemnon: Mycenae and the Search for a Hero is certainly a reliable source: it's a fairly academic history of the site of Mycenae (despite the slightly pulpy title), and Cathy Gere is a university history professor with university-press books on archaeological history to her name.
  • "The Salonica Campaign of the First World War from an Archaeologist's Perspective: Alan J. B. Wace's Greece Untrodden (1964)" is an academic article published in a peer-reviewed journal. The author, David Wills, has edited for Cambridge University Press on modern Greece, and published fairly widely in academic literature on the topic. The article also isn't holding a whole lot of weight: mostly dates and places that could be worked out by routine inference but need to be cited for our purposes (e.g. the dates of Wace's final exams, or that Camden Place is in Cambridge), or filling out small details of facts established by other sources.
  • First Athenian Memories is only cited for the views of its author, which are subjective (that Wace was A delightful combination of great scholarship and humour, a worldly humour too and not in the least pedagogic ... a tall, slim man full of nervous energy, with a fresh complexion and an extraordinarily merry pair of light blue eyes). These views are of interest because Mackenzie knew Wace, and went on to be a notable person in his own right, and because they give a contemporary impression of his character written in quite an elegant way. Per WP:ABOUTSELF, an author can be taken as reliable as a source for their own opinions, as here.
  • I think I've fixed the URL on the Frederick Wace obit. It's Google Books, so archiving is useless, unfortunately.

UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:12, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem I see is that if these are multi-page sources, then it's inconsistent to have them sans page numbers when the rest of such sources has them. The reason I am wondering about Compton Mackenzie is because it's not clear why his opinion would be important to note. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:00, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem I see is that if these are multi-page sources, then it's inconsistent to have them sans page numbers when the rest of such sources has them: I'm not sure it is: all sources are indicated with the degree of precision required or possible. If it helps, I could lengthen the footnotes to something like "the study/article/book is Wace 1923"? After all, we're not citing anything in the book, and it would be mildly ridiculous to write something like "Wace 1923, pp. 1–500" when all that's being done is directing readers to the fact of the publication's existence and the means to find it if they wish.
On Mackenzie: it's useful and interesting in a biography to include something about the subject's character, as far as we can. There are very few contemporary accounts of what Wace was like as a man (outside obituaries, which are a little suspect: nil nisi bonum and all that -- Stubbings is interesting in that what we cite from him doesn't entirely follow that "rule".). More significantly, both Gill and Grundon also quote this as a comment on what Wace was like, so I've multi-cited them: we are therefore covered by WP:DUEWEIGHT in any case. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:30, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like this is fine, then. Unfortunately, my relations don't have much to add to this topic. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:38, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from Tim riley[edit]

Only just spotted this review. Can't think how I've missed it until now. Comments follow a.s.a.p. Tim riley talk 10:07, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A splendid article, and a pleasure to review. Some quibbles:

  • "a prolific collector of Greek embroidery" – unexpected adjective: I associate prolific with abundant productiveness rather than acquisition. So, more to the point, does the OED.
    • Hm: it's fairly widely used on Google Books, and ngrams gives a fairly steep rise in its use since the 1960s. Did you have another adjective in mind? UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Prominent" perhaps? But if you're wedded to "prolific" I shall not press the point. Tim riley talk 15:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        • Sorry to drive by, but "known for his extensive collection of" or just "had an extensive collection of"? -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:58, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
          Again, basically sound but would also introduce new problems: "known for" has potential NPOV issues (see SC's review above) and "had a large collection" doesn't quite get the same point: it's not that he, at a single moment, had a lot of the stuff (particularly because he so often gave his collection away), but that he went collecting very often. Given the frequency of the term "prolific collector" in good sources on Google Books, I'd like to be descriptivist rather than prescriptivist here and say that it's entered the lexicon, even if it would have been regarded as incorrect at one time. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:18, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Educated at Shrewsbury School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, Wace's initial scholarly interests focused" – dangling modifier: Wace's interests were not educated at Shrewsbury and Cambridge.
  • "Thomas Ashby, who was himself acting as director" – do we need "himself" here?
    • I think so: it modifies acting to draw attention to the curious fact that neither man technically held the position in which they were working. Not massively wedded to it, but I think it works. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Following Dawkins' appointment" – a plain ess-apostrophe looks very odd here. This is what the current edition of Fowler has to say on the point:
"Names ending in -s. Use 's for the possessive case in names and surnames whenever possible; in other words, whenever you would tend to pronounce the possessive form of the name with an extra iz sound, e.g. Charles's brother, St James's Square, Thomas's niece, Zacharias's car.
Yes, missed that one -- I tend to use s' in my own writing, but MOS:' strongly prefers the other way. Changed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good. (Possibly you regard the publisher of Fowler as beyond the pale?) Tim riley talk 15:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "recovering numerous artefacts which they donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum" – did the authorities in Greece allow archaeologists to do what they wished with their finds? It wasn't like that in Egypt for Howard Carter and the other Egyptologists of the period.
    • This is an interesting one -- I've written before about Panagiotis Kavvadias, who closed a legal loophole in 1899 and in theory made all antiquities, no matter where they were found, the sole property of the Greek state. However, archaeologists clearly did go on exporting stuff, as the vast quantities of it in British museums shows. I don't know the details here, and the source doesn't go into them: I assume it was possible to negotiate some kind of deal whereby a proportion of the finds, particularly those considered less important, could be taken to the archaeologist's home country. No source suggests that Wace did anything untoward. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • Interesting, and as there's no convenient source to cite, fine as is. Tim riley talk 15:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in costume as a fräulein" – if you're using a lang template shouldn't the noun be given its capital letter?
  • "Wace and Karo agreed that the war should suspend contact between them" – this reads rather strangely: it was they, surely, and not the war that suspended contact?
    • I think an event can suspend something, in the sense of forcing it to be suspended, but I've rephrased here. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Although the BSA was forbidden to excavate from 1914, the American School of Classical Studies (ASCSA) continued its excavations" – I'm floundering a bit here. Why were the British forbidden and by whom? And why were the Americans allowed to continue?
    • The British government stopped the BSA from excavating because Britain was at war (and the BSA was being de facto converted into an outpost of the intelligence services). The Americans weren't (yet) at war, and neither were the Greeks (until 1917), and so carried on. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • That makes perfect sense. All the same, a few words of explanation in the text would be helpful, though I don't want to labour the point, and if you don't want to add anything, so be it. Tim riley talk 15:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        I've added a short note to say that both the US and Greece were officially uninvolved in the war during those two years; it's a fair point that not all of our readers will automatically know who joined the war when. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:25, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "John Percival Droop later called Wace and Blegen's ideas …" – We've already had his full name earlier.
    • Now just "Droop". UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • I am reminded of Bertie Wooster's comment: "Golly, Jeeves," I said, thinking of old Uncle Tom Portarlington, "there's some raw work pulled at the font from time to time, is there not?"
  • "which was later referred to by Rachel Hood, the wife of the BSA director Sinclair Hood, as the "difficult times"" – the use of the passive makes this a bit convoluted: it might be smoother to use the active: "which Rachel Hood, the wife of the BSA director Sinclair Hood, later referred to as the "difficult times""
    • I don't disagree on the clunkiness, but I think the suggestion makes it sound as if Hood coined the phrase, whereas she says that it "was referred to as..." -- in other words, she's explicitly saying that other people used it long before she did. We did have something like "which was later referred to as...", but another reviewer suggested that we should answer the question of "by whom?" as well as we can. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "As a result of political rioting, which took place in Athens" – do we need "which took place"?
    • I worry that As a result of political rioting in Athens at the end of July 1920, Wace opened would be at least slightly ambiguous as to whether the rioting or the opening took place at the end of July 1920. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Wace had all of the tholoi re-examined" – is "of" wanted here?
  • "had to be abandoned due to safety concerns" – "due to" is, I believe, accepted in AmE as a compound preposition on a par with "owing to", but in BrE it is not universally so regarded. "Owing to" or, better, "because of" is safer. (It is only fair to add that the current edition of Fowler stigmatises my contention as "the tut-tutting of last-ditch pedants" (p. 239) and The Guardian's style guide says "The distinction, once routinely taught in primary schools but now assailed on all sides, especially by train and tube announcers, is being lost", and that's true, but it ain't lost yet. The later "suggests that this was due to Wace's disfavour" is wholly blameless, however)
  • "the primary force behind Wace's departure.[69]}}" – some stray characters I didn't dare delete, just in case.
  • "After his dismissal from the BSA" – is being denied a new contract when the old one expires actually "dimissal"?
    • Probably not technically, though the sources present it as a conscious decision to get Wace out and as tantamount to a sacking. Nevertheless, changed to "After leaving the BSA". UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "While at the V&A, he published widely on embroidery" – I imagine he published on paper about embroidery.
    • I'm not sure I see a problem here: "he has written an essay on St. Paul's Cathedral" doesn't get anyone accused of graffiti, does it?UndercoverClassicist T·C14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The Scottish writer Compton Mackenzie" – is it relevant that Mackenzie was a Scot?
  • "Selected works" – as one of the FAC criteria is comprehensiveness I think "selected works" as a heading is a rather flagrant sign that it isn't comprehensive, as well as inviting the question "selected by whom?" Something like "Major works" would be all right if you are satisfied that it is a correct description.
    • I treat it as a hedge: the criterion for inclusion is "all the works I've been able to find". I worry that "Major works" would be inviting a "who says?" Would a change to "Published works" work? UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:43, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • Published works will do nicely. (In passing, and not for the article, how came it that he wrote the Blenheim book so very posthumously?) Tim riley talk 15:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        Done -- pass on the latter; I assume he wrote it beforehand but hadn't published it yet. Perhaps Helen did, as she did for Greece Untrodden? The 1968 edition is definitely the first. There was a review in History Today vol. 18, apparently, by DG Chandler, but I haven't been able to get hold of it to see if he has a comment explaining it. Might stick a request on RX to see if anyone can find it. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:29, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        @Tim riley: An RX volunteer very helpfully dug it out -- it was indeed Helen, though Alan wrote most of it during the 1930s. Note and citation added. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's my lot. Over to you. – Tim riley talk 11:14, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well, I'm happy on all points now, and ready to add my support for the elevation of this article. It seems to meet every FAC criterion and I much enjoyed reading it. Tim riley talk 15:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Afterthought: I grow old and forgetful, and so please prod me whenever you have an article for review if you'd like me to put an oar in. Tim riley talk 16:29, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Matarisvan[edit]

Hi UC, some minor comments from me.

  • By "the Sparta museum", do you mean the Archaeological Museum of Sparta?
  • Consider linking to votive?
  • Consider rewording "In April 1905, he made a survey alongside Albert William van Buren [de], of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome, of the Magnesian peninsula in Thessaly." to "In April 1905, he made a survey of the Magnesian peninsula in Thessaly with Albert William van Buren [de] of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome"? The former is a little confusing and disturbs the reading flow a bit.
  • Consider adding the link Varieties of Modern Greek to modern Greek dialects?
  • Is the Tirnavo you mention the same as Tyrnavos?
    • I think so: changed and linked, as the linked Tyrnavos has a large Vlach community. Doing a bit more research (e.g. here), it's definitely the right place. UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:36, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Consider linking to "John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough" and "Blenheim Palace"?
  • Do we have an ISBN or OCLC number for the Newnham College Register, vol III? If so, adding it would make accessing the register easier.
  • Consider linking to Richard Clogg?

That's all from my end. Cheers! Matarisvan (talk) 10:44, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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