Frank Edward Brown
Encyclopedia
Frank Edward Brown was a preeminent Mediterranean archaeologist.
in Northfield, Minnesota
, (B.A. 1929), Brown went on to receive his doctorate at Yale University
(Ph.D. 1938). He would then serve as Assistant Professor of Classics there until the United States
entered World War II
, during which time he served the Office of War Information in Syria
and Lebanon
. In 1945 he became Director General of Antiquities of the Republic of Syria.
Brown first came to Rome
and to the American Academy
in 1931 as a graduate student of Yale University. Early a fellow of the American Academy in Rome
, Brown went to Syria in 1932 to excavate at Dura-Europos
with the joint Yale University- Académie des Inscriptions (France) mission under the direction of Franz Cumont
and Michael Rostovtzeff
and became field director at Dura
in 1935.
from Syria in 1947 marked the beginning of the Academy's involvement in archaeological fieldwork in Italy
with the excavations of the Latin colony of Cosa
(Ansedonia) in southwestern Tuscany
, a site which has since become a template for the archaeology of Latin colonies and mid-Republican Rome itself. Brown remained at the Academy as Professor in Charge of the Classical School and Director of Excavations from 1947–1952 and then returned to Yale as Professor of Classics where in addition to his teaching responsibilities he continued to be active in the publication of Dura- Europus and in the life of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the offices of which were then in New Haven
. He was Secretary of ASOR
, 1955–1962, Master of Jonathan Edwards College
, 1953–1956, and in collaboration with his Yale colleagues, Professors Lawrence Richardson, Jr. and Emeline Richardson, produced the second volume of the Cosa excavation reports, The Temples of the Arx, (MAAR 1960). A generation of American Classical archaeologists and historians received their training under Brown at Cosa; notable among them are Lawrence Richardson, Jr., Emeline Hill Richardson
, Russell T. Scott, and Stephen L. Dyson.
In the same period he served the Archaeological Institute of America
as Trustee and Norton Lecturer. In 1963, however, Brown left Yale to return permanently to the American Academy in Rome, resuming the positions of Professor in Charge and Director of Excavations to which were added the responsibilities of the directorship of the Academy in 1965-1969. Nevertheless these years saw him characteristically active both in Rome and in Ansedonia
. In 1963 he made soundings in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli
. At the invitation of the Archaeological Superintendency of Rome, he returned in 1964 to the Regia
in the Roman Forum
, a building of which he had made an architectural study during his years as a Fellow. The excavation of the Regia was to yield the most substantial evidence for early organization and development of the Forum since the work of Giacomo Boni
at the turn of the century. In 1965 he resumed work at Cosa supervising fieldwork and the preparation of additional publications of the Cosa series, and the design, construction, and outfitting of the site museum, since 1981 the National Museum of Cosa.
From Rome he was also able to further the work of other American archaeologists in Italy and Yugoslavia
, as well as the corpus of Roman mosaics in North Africa
and the international project to safeguard the Punic and Roman antiquities of Carthage
. While Director of the Academy, he was also President of the International Union of the Institutes of Archaeology, History, and the History of Art in Rome in 1966-1967, and he was active in the affairs of the International Association for Classical Archaeology throughout his years in Rome.
on the early colonies of Rome in 1980. In 1982 he was Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery in Washington
where he continued to work on Vitruvius
and returned to the study of the architecture of the Hierothesion of Antiochus I of Commagene at Nemrud Dagh, a project he had helped develop for ASOR in the 1950s. His last years in Rome were given over to the preparation of final reports on the excavations in the forum of Cosa and the Regia in the Roman Forum. On 21 April 1983, he was honored for his services to Italian archaeology by the city of Rome as Cultore di Roma.
, and the American Philological Association
. In March 1987 Frank Brown took leave of Rome and the American Academy to join his wife of 50 years, the former Jaquelin Goddard, in Florida.
Education
Educated at Carleton CollegeCarleton College
Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. In 2012 U.S...
in Northfield, Minnesota
Northfield, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 17,147 people, 4,909 households, and 3,210 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,452.2 people per square mile . There were 5,119 housing units at an average density of 732.1 per square mile...
, (B.A. 1929), Brown went on to receive his doctorate at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
(Ph.D. 1938). He would then serve as Assistant Professor of Classics there until the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
entered World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, during which time he served the Office of War Information in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
. In 1945 he became Director General of Antiquities of the Republic of Syria.
Brown first came to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and to the American Academy
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
in 1931 as a graduate student of Yale University. Early a fellow of the American Academy in Rome
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
, Brown went to Syria in 1932 to excavate at Dura-Europos
Dura-Europos
Dura-Europos , also spelled Dura-Europus, was a Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 m above the right bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in today's Syria....
with the joint Yale University- Académie des Inscriptions (France) mission under the direction of Franz Cumont
Franz Cumont
Franz-Valéry-Marie Cumont was a Belgian archaeologist and historian, a philologist and student of epigraphy, who brought these often isolated specialties to bear on the syncretic mystery religions of Late Antiquity, notably Mithraism. Cumont was a graduate of the University of Ghent...
and Michael Rostovtzeff
Michael Rostovtzeff
Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, or Rostovtsev was one of the 20th century's foremost authorities on ancient Greek, Iranian, and Roman history....
and became field director at Dura
Dura-Europos
Dura-Europos , also spelled Dura-Europus, was a Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 m above the right bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in today's Syria....
in 1935.
Fieldwork and Career
His return to the American Academy in RomeAmerican Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
from Syria in 1947 marked the beginning of the Academy's involvement in archaeological fieldwork in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
with the excavations of the Latin colony of Cosa
Cosa
Cosa was a Latin colonia founded under Roman influence in southwestern Tuscany in 273 BC, perhaps on land confiscated from the Etruscans...
(Ansedonia) in southwestern Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
, a site which has since become a template for the archaeology of Latin colonies and mid-Republican Rome itself. Brown remained at the Academy as Professor in Charge of the Classical School and Director of Excavations from 1947–1952 and then returned to Yale as Professor of Classics where in addition to his teaching responsibilities he continued to be active in the publication of Dura- Europus and in the life of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the offices of which were then in New Haven
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
. He was Secretary of ASOR
Asor
The asore |shin]] resh עשר) was a musical instrument "of ten strings" mentioned in the Bible. There is little agreement on what sort of instrument it was.-Biblical references:...
, 1955–1962, Master of Jonathan Edwards College
Jonathan Edwards College
Jonathan Edwards College is a residential college at Yale University. Established in 1932, it is the oldest of Yale's residential colleges. Members of the Yale community refer to it informally as J.E....
, 1953–1956, and in collaboration with his Yale colleagues, Professors Lawrence Richardson, Jr. and Emeline Richardson, produced the second volume of the Cosa excavation reports, The Temples of the Arx, (MAAR 1960). A generation of American Classical archaeologists and historians received their training under Brown at Cosa; notable among them are Lawrence Richardson, Jr., Emeline Hill Richardson
Emeline Hill Richardson
Emeline Hill Richardson was a notable classical archaeologist and Etruscan scholar. She studied at Radcliffe College, receiving an A.B. in 1932 and an M.A. in 1935. In 1935/36 she studied with Bernard Ashmole at the University of London. She completed her Ph.D. in 1939 at Radcliffe College...
, Russell T. Scott, and Stephen L. Dyson.
In the same period he served the Archaeological Institute of America
Archaeological Institute of America
The Archaeological Institute of America is a North American nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of public interest in archaeology, and the preservation of archaeological sites. It has offices on the campus of Boston University and in New York City.The institute was founded in 1879,...
as Trustee and Norton Lecturer. In 1963, however, Brown left Yale to return permanently to the American Academy in Rome, resuming the positions of Professor in Charge and Director of Excavations to which were added the responsibilities of the directorship of the Academy in 1965-1969. Nevertheless these years saw him characteristically active both in Rome and in Ansedonia
Ansedonia
Ansedonia is a frazione of the comune of Orbetello, in the province of Grosseto, southern Tuscany .It is a renowned tourist resort. The village lies near the ruins of the ancient Roman town of Cosa.-External links:*...
. In 1963 he made soundings in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli
Santa Maria in Aracoeli
The Basilica of St. Mary of the Altar of Heaven is a titular basilica in Rome, located on the highest summit of the Campidoglio. It is still the designated Church of the city council of Rome, which uses the ancient title of Senatus Populusque Romanus...
. At the invitation of the Archaeological Superintendency of Rome, he returned in 1964 to the Regia
Regia
The Regia was a structure in Ancient Rome, located in the Roman Forum. It was originally the residence of the kings of Rome or at least their main headquarters, and later the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of Roman religion. It occupied a triangular patch of terrain between the...
in the Roman Forum
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum...
, a building of which he had made an architectural study during his years as a Fellow. The excavation of the Regia was to yield the most substantial evidence for early organization and development of the Forum since the work of Giacomo Boni
Giacomo Boni (archaeologist)
Giacomo Boni was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Roman architecture.Born in Venice, Boni studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in his native city and later dedicated himself to extensive and important excavations in the Forum Romanum in Rome...
at the turn of the century. In 1965 he resumed work at Cosa supervising fieldwork and the preparation of additional publications of the Cosa series, and the design, construction, and outfitting of the site museum, since 1981 the National Museum of Cosa.
From Rome he was also able to further the work of other American archaeologists in Italy and Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, as well as the corpus of Roman mosaics in North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
and the international project to safeguard the Punic and Roman antiquities of Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
. While Director of the Academy, he was also President of the International Union of the Institutes of Archaeology, History, and the History of Art in Rome in 1966-1967, and he was active in the affairs of the International Association for Classical Archaeology throughout his years in Rome.
Scholarship
Having resigned the directorship of the Academy in 1969, Brown remained Professor in Charge of the Classical School until his retirement in 1976, when he received the Academy's Medal of Merit for his many years of outstanding service to that institution. He continued to serve the Academy thereafter as Thomas Spencer Jerome Lecturer in 1979, from which series came the book Cosa: The Making of a Roman Town (1980), and as the leader of a summer seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the HumanitiesNational Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
on the early colonies of Rome in 1980. In 1982 he was Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
where he continued to work on Vitruvius
Vitruvius
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....
and returned to the study of the architecture of the Hierothesion of Antiochus I of Commagene at Nemrud Dagh, a project he had helped develop for ASOR in the 1950s. His last years in Rome were given over to the preparation of final reports on the excavations in the forum of Cosa and the Regia in the Roman Forum. On 21 April 1983, he was honored for his services to Italian archaeology by the city of Rome as Cultore di Roma.
Honors
In Italy he was a foreign member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and of the Società Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere e Arti in Napoli, and the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici (Firenze), and a member of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. In America he was a member of ASOR, Archaeological Institute of AmericaArchaeological Institute of America
The Archaeological Institute of America is a North American nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of public interest in archaeology, and the preservation of archaeological sites. It has offices on the campus of Boston University and in New York City.The institute was founded in 1879,...
, and the American Philological Association
American Philological Association
The American Philological Association , founded in 1869, is a non-profit North American scholarly organization devoted to all aspects of Greek and Roman civilization...
. In March 1987 Frank Brown took leave of Rome and the American Academy to join his wife of 50 years, the former Jaquelin Goddard, in Florida.
Publications
- Plautus, Titus Maccius. T. Macci Plauti Pseudolus, edited, with an introduction and notes, by Edgar H. Sturtevant in collaboration with Frank E. Brown, Frederick W. Schaefer and John P. Showerman. New Haven, Yale university press; London, H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1932.
- The excavations at Dura-Europos, conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Final report ..., New Haven, Yale University Press, 1943-
- Cosa II: The temples of the Arx By Frank Edward Brown, Emeline Hill Richardson and L. Richardson. Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1960. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome v. 26
- Roman architecture. New York: G. Braziller, 1961.
- Cosa: the making of a Roman town. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980.
- Cosa III: the buildings of the forum: colony, municipium, and village. By Frank Edward Brown, Emeline Hill Richardson, L. Richardson. University Park, Pa. : Published for the American Academy in Rome by Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome v. 37
- Eius virtutis studiosi: classical and postclassical studies in memory of Frank Edward Brown (1908-1988) edited by Russell T. Scott and Ann Reynolds Scott. Washington : National Gallery of Art, 1993.