Elizabeth Wayland Barber
{{short description|American textile archaeologist and writer}}
Elizabeth Jane Wayland "E.J.W." Barber ({{nee}} Wayland; born 1940) is an American scholar and expert on archaeology, linguistics, textiles, and folk dance as well as professor emerita of archaeology and linguistics at Occidental College.{{cite web|url=http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Author.aspx?id=6706 |title=Elizabeth Wayland Barber | W. W. Norton & Company |publisher=Books.wwnorton.com |date= |accessdate=2012-08-31}}
Early life
Elizabeth Jane Wayland was born in 1940 in Pasadena.{{cite web |title=Elizabeth Wayland Barber profile|url=https://trowelblazers.com/elizabeth-wayland-barber/ |website=Trowel Blazers|date=22 December 2016 }} She became interested in archaeology at a young age because of her love of interdisciplinary sciences. Her family moved to France during her childhood, where she learned French, beginning her interest in linguistics. She first developed expert sewing and weaving skills under her mother's tutelage.{{cite journal |last1=Barber |first1=Elizabeth J. Wayland (1940--) |title=Elizabeth J. Wayland Barber Papers Finding Aid |url=https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/27600 |website=Texas ScholarWorks |publisher=Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP) |date=2014}}
Scholarly work
She earned a bachelor's degree from Bryn Mawr College in Archaeology and Greek in 1962.{{cite web |url=http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/history/alumnae.html |title=Bryn Mawr College: Greek, Latin & Classical Studies |publisher=Brynmawr.edu |accessdate=2012-08-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121013222143/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/history/alumnae.html |archive-date=2012-10-13 |url-status=dead }} Her chief mentor was Mabel Lang from whom she learned Linear B and who advised her honors thesis on Linear A. In addition to Lang, Wayland wrote her thesis under Emmett L. Bennett Jr. Her thesis used computer indices of the Hagia Triada Linear A texts in an attempt to decipher its signs and symbols.{{cite journal |last1=Barber |first1=Elizabeth J. Wayland (1940--) |title=Elizabeth J. Wayland Barber Papers Finding Aid |url=https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/27600 |website=Texas ScholarWorks |publisher=Program for Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP) |date=2014}} The computer indices were made via punched cards, a method which was preceded by the work of Alice E. Kober on Linear B. She earned her PhD from Yale University in linguistics in 1968.{{cite journal |last1=Barber |first1=Elizabeth J. Wayland (1940--) |title=Elizabeth J. Wayland Barber Papers Finding Aid |url=https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/27600 |website=Texas ScholarWorks |publisher=Program for Aegean Scripts and Prehistory |date=2014}} Her doctoral study at Yale University was supervised by Sydney Lamb, under whom she wrote her dissertation, "The Computer Aided Analysis of Undeciphered Ancient Texts."{{cite book |title=The Computer Aided Analysis of Undeciphered Ancient Texts |date=January 1968 |publisher=Self Published |url=https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Aided-Analysis-Undeciphered-Ancient-Texts/dp/B000J0E8XG}}
Books
Her books include Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean (1992), Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years; Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (1995), The Mummies of Ürümchi (1999), When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth (2004; coauthored with husband Paul T. Barber), The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance (2013), Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe: A History in Layers (2013), and Two Thoughts with but a Single Mind: Crime and Punishment and the Writing of Fiction (2013; co-authored with husband P.T. Barber and Mary F. Zirin).{{cite web|url=https://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Wayland-Barber/e/B000APA87K |title=Elizabeth Wayland Barber: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle |publisher=Amazon.com |accessdate=2012-08-31}}{{cite web|url=http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=24714 |title=The Dancing Goddesses | W. W. Norton & Company |publisher=Books.wwnorton.com |date= |accessdate=2012-08-31}}{{cite book|title=When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth (9780691127743): Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Paul T. Barber: Books |date= 25 September 2006|isbn=0691127743 |last1=Barber |first1=Elizabeth Wayland |last2=Barber |first2=Paul T. |publisher= Princeton University Press}}
Among other things, she has proposed that if 19th-century scientists had thought to name prehistorical periods with an eye on women's work and the things they invented, instead of focusing their naming only on men's more durable inventions (Iron Age, Bronze Age, etc.), that they might have acknowledged women's invention of string as what she has named “The String Revolution.”{{cite web |url=http://www.imow.org/community/blog/viewBlog?id=1&archiveDate=8%2F1%2F2009 |title=Clio Talks Back – International Museum of Women |publisher=Imow.org |date=2009-11-08 |accessdate=2012-08-31 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110624010623/http://www.imow.org/community/blog/viewBlog?id=1&archiveDate=8%2F1%2F2009 |archivedate=2011-06-24 }}
Personal life
In addition to her academic work, as of 2009 she has directed and choreographed for her own folk and historical dance troupe for 38 years.{{cite web |url=http://www.smcm.edu/wgsx/annual_colloquium/2009/coll09_Barber.html |title=Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies: St. Mary's College of Maryland |publisher=Smcm.edu |date=2012-03-23 |accessdate=2012-08-31 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910021419/http://www.smcm.edu/wgsx/annual_colloquium/2009/coll09_Barber.html |archivedate=2012-09-10 }}
In 2016 and 2017, Barber's dance troupe performed at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHRI9l3kZUU UCLA (See Video)], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiaSp9Rv0_c Occidental College, and 2017 Sunshine Statewide Folk Dance Festival.]
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUvB0lD8E5M Elizabeth Wayland Barber speaks on the Xinjiang Textiles: More Corridors in the Goldmine at the Silk Road Symposium held at the Penn Museum in March 2011.]
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Category:American women archaeologists
Category:Linguists from the United States
Category:Bryn Mawr College alumni
Category:Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Category:20th-century American archaeologists
Category:21st-century American archaeologists
Category:20th-century American writers
Category:21st-century American writers
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)