Abstract
MR. SETON LLOYD, who (as announced in Nature of August 14, p. 250) has been elected to the directorship of the recently founded British Institute of Archæology in Ankara, started his career as architectural assistant to Sir Edwin Lutyens, and gained his early archæological experience in Egypt during the late ‘twenties. During 1930–37 he worked under Dr. Henri Frankfort, as field supervisor to the Iraq Expedition of the Chicago Oriental Institute, and there gained an exceptionally detailed knowledge of mound-excavation on a wide variety of Mesopotamian sites. During this period he had the satisfaction of recovering many now famous art treasures from the rich Sumerian temples of Tell Asmar and Tell Ajrab. Next came two seasons with the Neilson Expedition under Prof. J. Garstang at Mersin in Turkey, where a stratified excavation of extreme complexity gave full scope to his particular talent. Since 1939, as technical adviser to the Directorate of Antiquities in the Government of Iraq, he has been indirectly responsible for a succession of astonishingly successful excavations, which have not only preserved the continuity of archæological discovery, but also raised his Department from a mere administrative service to a unique position as a research institution. Indeed, it would be difficult to over-estimate the debt which Mesopotamian archæology already owes to Mr. Lloyd‘s technique and the new generation of Iraqi excavators to his guidance. His name is now coupled with those of Mallowan and Woolley as one of the most gifted and successful excavators of our age. On him devolves the task of training those of the coming generation, and it could not be in better hands. His publications show him to be a good all-round archæologist and good artist, with a scholarly as well as a scientific outlook. The new Institute thus makes an auspicious start.
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The British Institute of Archæology, Ankara : Mr. Seton Lloyd. Nature 162, 327 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162327a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162327a0