Joan du Plat Taylor (1906–1983)

Joan du Plat Taylor was born in Glasgow, Scotland, where her father, Col. St. John Louis Hyde du Plat Taylor, was stationed. She had no formal education as her mother refused to allow her to attend school. In 1926, the family moved to Nicosia, Cyprus, where Joan began to volunteer in the Cyprus Museum. She became an assistant to Porphyrios Dikaios, director of the museum, and -- despite her lack of formal training -- went on to become acting Inspector of Antiquities. She participated in excavations at the Roman British town of Verulamium in 1931-1932 and at Maiden Castle in 1935-1936. After these projects, she worked in Cyprus at the Neolithic settlement at Khirokitia in 1934-1946. She also directed excavations at Ayios Philon, an early Christian basilica, and at Apliki, a Late Bronze Age copper-mining settlement, both of which resulted in publications. In 1945, she became Librarian at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, a position she held until her retirement in 1970. Beginning in 1949, she excavated at Coba Hüyük (Sakce Gözü) in southeastern Turkey and at Myrtou-Pigadhes in Cyprus. In 1959, she worked with Honor Frost, Peter Throckmorton, and Frédéric Dumas on the 12th-century BC (Late Bronze Age) Phoenician shipwreck at Gelidonya, the oldest shipwreck in the world at that time. In 1960 she worked on the remains of a Phoenician city at Motya, a small island near Marsala, Sicily. In 1967, she directed excavations at Gravina di Puglia (Botromagno), north of Taranto, Italy, the site of an Iron Age city. After that project, she began campaigning to bring nautical archaeology into the academic fold. She was instrumental in establishing the Council for Nautical Archaeology and was the founder-editor of the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration in 1972. She served as the first president of the Nautical Archaeology Society.