Vox Meditantis

When Dr. Anna Marie Farnsworth (1895-1991) arrived at the Athenian Agora excavation in 1938, she brought something no archaeological dig had seen before: a chemistry laboratory amid the classical ruins. She pioneered archaeological chemistry by applying spectroscopic analysis and X-ray diffraction to decode the formulas of ancient ceramic glazes and pigments, revolutionising how we understand antiquity through material science. Her groundbreaking research identified the composition of black Attic glaze and fifth-century red glaze, yet despite earning her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1922 – when women were expected to remain at home – Farnsworth has been largely forgotten, her interdisciplinary brilliance falling between the cracks of traditional academic recognition.

Welcome, Dr. Farnsworth. It’s an honour to speak with you. Though you passed away in 1991, your influence continues to shape science well into 2025. Looking back, how do you think you’d feel about a century of scientific progress?

Peculiar, I’ll tell you that much. I never thought I’d live to see computers smaller than a room, let alone people carrying them about in their pockets. But the principles haven’t changed – atoms still behave the same way they did when I was grinding pigments at the Fogg Museum. That’s rather comforting, actually.

Let’s start at the beginning. You were born in Latour, Missouri, in 1895. What sparked your interest in chemistry?

Latour wasn’t the sort of place where girls were encouraged toward science. We had one schoolhouse, dirt roads, and modest expectations. But I was lucky – my parents never told me I couldn’t do something simply because I was female. When I went to Central Missouri State, I just… kept going. Chemistry made sense to me in a way that other subjects didn’t. It was logical. Predictable. You could ask a question and design an experiment to answer it. That appealed to me enormously.

I transferred to the University of Chicago in 1916. People ask why I chose physics and chemistry for my bachelor’s degrees – as if it was some grand feminist statement. It wasn’t. I liked them. I was good at them. It seemed sensible to keep at it.

You earned your PhD in chemistry in 1922. What was that experience like as a woman?

Lonely, mostly. There weren’t many of us. The men weren’t overtly hostile – well, most of them weren’t – but you could feel the doubt. You had to be twice as careful with your work because any mistake would be attributed to your sex rather than your inexperience. I remember one professor who would only address the male students during lectures, even when I raised my hand. I stopped raising it after a while.

But I was stubborn. My dissertation committee couldn’t argue with my data, and that’s what mattered. The degree was mine, fair and square.

After your PhD, you worked at the Bureau of Mines, then taught at NYU, where you published a textbook on quantitative analysis in 1928. But in 1936, you moved to the Fogg Art Museum. What prompted that shift?

Money, partly. University positions for women were scarce and poorly paid. But it was also curiosity. Edward Forbes had established the Department of Technical Studies at the Fogg in 1928 – the first laboratory in America dedicated to the scientific study of art materials. They were doing things no one else was: using X-rays to examine paintings, analysing pigments chemically, applying physics to art conservation.

I thought, “Here’s a place where chemistry can answer questions historians can’t.” That intrigued me. Art historians could tell you who painted something and when, but they couldn’t tell you how – what materials were used, what techniques, what temperatures. Chemistry speaks when artefacts stay silent.

In 1938, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens invited you to join the Agora excavation. You were one of the first chemists ever asked to join a dig. What was that like?

Astonishing. And terrifying. I arrived with my spectrograph and diffraction equipment – heavy, fragile things – and the archaeologists looked at me as though I’d brought a brass band to a funeral. They were digging up history, and here I was with machines and chemicals.

But Homer Thompson, the director, understood. He’d seen fragments of pottery with that brilliant black glaze, and he wanted to know how the ancient Athenians had made it. No amount of excavation could answer that question. You needed chemistry.

Let’s talk about that glaze. Your 1941 paper on black Attic glaze is considered groundbreaking. Can you walk us through the technical process of analysing it?

Certainly. The black glaze on Attic pottery isn’t a glaze in the modern sense – it’s not a separate material applied to the surface. It’s a slip made from the same clay as the pot itself, just refined. The Athenians figured out how to manipulate iron in the clay through a three-stage firing process.

Here’s how it works: First, you prepare a slip by levigating the clay – suspending it in water and letting the coarser particles settle whilst the finer particles remain in suspension. That fine fraction has a higher iron content relative to its particle size. You apply this slip to the unfired pot.

Then comes the firing. Stage one: oxidising atmosphere, around 800 to 900 degrees Celsius. The iron in both the clay body and the slip oxidises to ferric oxide – Fe₂O₃ – which gives you that familiar reddish-orange colour. Both the pot and the slip look red at this point.

Stage two: reducing atmosphere. You close the kiln vents, starving it of oxygen. The temperature rises to about 950 degrees. The iron oxide in both the clay body and the slip reduces to magnetite – Fe₃O₄ – which is black. But here’s the clever bit: because the slip particles are so fine and the slip has vitrified slightly, it becomes impermeable. It forms a glassy surface that locks in the magnetite.

Stage three: oxidising atmosphere again. You open the vents, reintroducing oxygen. The coarser clay body, which is porous, reoxidises back to ferric oxide – red. But the vitrified slip is impermeable. The oxygen can’t penetrate it, so the magnetite stays reduced – black. The result is a red pot with a permanent black gloss.

How did you determine all this?

Spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and petrographic analysis. I’d take a tiny sample – and I mean tiny, a few milligrams – and use the spectrograph to identify the elemental composition. That told me iron was the key colouring agent. Then I’d use X-ray diffraction to identify the crystalline phases. That’s how I distinguished magnetite from hematite – they have different crystal structures.

I also did refiring experiments. I’d take a sherd, fire it under controlled conditions – different atmospheres, different temperatures – and observe what happened. That’s how I confirmed the three-stage process. The atoms remember what historians forgot.

Your methods were revolutionary. What advantages did they have over previous approaches?

Before spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, people were guessing. They’d look at a pot and say, “Oh, that’s manganese” or “That’s carbon black.” But they were wrong. Manganese produces a purplish black; carbon produces a sooty black that rubs off. Neither produces the brilliant, permanent black you see on Attic ware.

My methods were quantitative and reproducible. I could measure the exact proportions of elements, identify specific compounds, and test my hypotheses through controlled experiments. That’s the difference between guessing and knowing.

The disadvantage, of course, was that my methods required sampling. Archaeologists hated that. You’d think I was asking for their firstborn child. I’d need a fragment the size of a pea, and they’d act as though I was destroying the Parthenon itself.

What about your work on fifth-century intentional red glaze, published in 1958? How did that differ from the black glaze?

Red glaze is trickier. With black glaze, you’re preserving a reduced state. With red glaze, you’re creating a permanent oxidised state that’s different from the clay body. The Athenians achieved this by adding more iron oxide to the slip or by adjusting the firing conditions to promote hematite formation whilst maintaining some gloss.

I used the same analytical techniques – spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, refiring experiments – but the interpretation was more complex. The mineral phases were more varied, and the firing window was narrower. Too little oxygen and you’d get black; too much and the gloss would lose its brilliance.

It took me nearly two decades to publish that paper, partly because the evidence was subtler and partly because I was working at Metal & Thermit Corporation by then. Industrial chemistry paid the bills, but it left less time for pottery.

Let’s talk about that. You left archaeology during World War II to work at Metal & Thermit. Why?

The war. Archaeology doesn’t pay for itself in peacetime, let alone during a global conflict. Excavations stopped. Funding dried up. I needed work, and Metal & Thermit was hiring chemists. I spent nearly twenty years there, working on metallurgical problems – nothing glamorous, but it was steady work.

People assume I abandoned archaeology, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t afford to pursue it full-time. I kept reading the journals, corresponding with colleagues, analysing samples when I could. Archaeology was my passion; metallurgy was my livelihood.

You identified several other significant materials during your career: Athenian cement as beeswax and lime, Hellenistic pink pigments as rose madder, and ancient zinc. Can you tell us about the rose madder discovery?

Ah, yes. That was satisfying. Pink pigments in ancient contexts were often assumed to be faded reds – degraded cinnabar or ochre. But I found fragments from second-century BC Corinth and Athens that showed a distinctive pink hue under normal light and a brilliant orange fluorescence under ultraviolet light. That fluorescence was the giveaway.

Rose madder – derived from the roots of Rubia tinctorum, the madder plant – contains organic compounds called anthraquinones, particularly purpurin and pseudopurpurin. These fluoresce under UV light. I used spectroscopy to identify the chemical signatures and confirmed it with reference samples.

What made it significant was that I was the first to positively identify rose madder in Hellenistic contexts. Everyone had assumed madder was too fugitive – too prone to fading – to survive two thousand years. But if you mix it with an alum substrate and keep it away from direct sunlight, it preserves remarkably well.

You mentioned undocumented techniques earlier. Were there tricks you used that didn’t make it into your publications?

Oh, certainly. Published papers are polished things – they show the elegant result, not the messy process. For instance, when I was preparing samples for X-ray diffraction, I’d sometimes add a tiny amount of quartz powder as an internal standard. That helped me correct for instrumental drift and ensured my measurements were accurate. I didn’t always mention that in the papers because it seemed obvious, but younger colleagues were baffled when their results didn’t match mine.

I also learned to trust my eyes. Spectroscopy is wonderful, but sometimes you’d get spurious peaks from contamination or modern consolidants that archaeologists had applied to the pottery. I’d look at the sherd under magnification, note any modern treatments, and adjust my interpretation accordingly. Instruments don’t replace judgement.

You worked extensively in Corinth from 1958 to 1964. How did that compare to your earlier work at the Agora?

Corinth was different. By then, archaeologists had seen what chemistry could do, so there was less scepticism. I had more freedom to explore questions that interested me – clay sources, firing temperatures, pigment compositions. I studied trade patterns by matching clay mineralogy from pots to geological sources. You could trace a pot’s origin by its petrology.

But Corinth was also harder physically. I was in my sixties by then, working in trenches under the Greek sun, hauling equipment. My knees weren’t what they’d been in 1938.

Let’s address something difficult. You never held a permanent academic position. Your work was published in specialised journals with limited circulation. Why do you think you’ve been overlooked?

Several reasons. First, I’m a woman. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Women in science were tolerated, not celebrated. We were exceptions, curiosities. Our work was assessed more harshly, and our contributions were easily forgotten.

Second, I worked between disciplines. Archaeologists thought I was a chemist; chemists thought I was an archaeologist. I didn’t fit neatly into either camp, so neither claimed me. Interdisciplinary work is praised now, but in my day, it was professionally isolating.

Third, my work lacks drama. I didn’t discover a tomb or unearth a statue. I analysed glazes. That doesn’t make headlines. It’s meticulous, technical, and – let’s be honest – boring to most people. But it’s foundational. You can’t understand ancient technology without it.

Finally, I was peripatetic. I worked in Greece, New York, New Jersey, Missouri – never staying long enough to build an institutional power base. And I was private. I didn’t network aggressively or promote myself. Perhaps I should have, but it wasn’t in my nature.

You received the first Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology in 1980. How did that feel?

Unexpected. I was 85 years old, long retired. I’d assumed my work had been forgotten. But there it was – recognition from the Archaeological Institute of America. It meant a great deal, not because I needed validation, but because it suggested my methods had taken root. Younger scholars were using spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction in archaeology. That was the real achievement.

Looking back, what mistakes do you wish you could correct?

I was too reticent. I should have published more, fought harder for funding, insisted on co-authorships when my work was incorporated into others’ papers. I let myself be sidelined because I didn’t want to make a fuss. That was a mistake.

I also wish I’d been more methodical about preserving samples and data. Some of my early work at the Fogg is lost because I didn’t keep proper records. I was young and didn’t realise how valuable that material would become.

And I should have trained more students. I taught one course – “Science for the Archaeologist” at the University of Missouri in the 1960s – but by then I was nearly seventy. If I’d had a faculty position earlier, I could have mentored a generation of archaeological scientists. That’s a lost opportunity I regret.

What would you say to critics who argued your methods were too invasive or that chemistry reduces art to mere data?

Rubbish. Chemistry doesn’t reduce art; it illuminates it. Knowing how the Athenians made black glaze doesn’t diminish the beauty of a red-figure kylix. It deepens our appreciation. We marvel not just at the form, but at the ingenuity – the mastery of materials and fire.

As for invasiveness, yes, my methods required sampling. But a milligram of pottery in the service of knowledge is a fair trade. Museums preserve thousands of sherds that will never be displayed. Using a tiny fragment to unlock centuries of technological history is responsible stewardship, not vandalism.

Your work prefigures modern heritage science – non-destructive imaging, chemical fingerprinting, materials science. How do you feel about that legacy?

Vindicated, mostly. People scoffed when I brought a spectrograph to an archaeological dig. Now every major excavation has scientific support – chemists, physicists, geologists. Archaeological science is a recognised field. That’s progress.

I’m also pleased that modern techniques are less destructive. Portable X-ray fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, neutron activation analysis – you can analyse pottery without taking samples now. That’s an enormous improvement. But the principles remain the same: use science to ask questions about the past.

What advice would you give to young women entering STEM fields today, especially those working at disciplinary boundaries?

First, be stubborn. You’ll face scepticism, condescension, and outright hostility. Ignore it. Let your work speak for itself. Good data is a powerful argument.

Second, document everything. Keep meticulous records. You never know what will become important later.

Third, collaborate. I worked alone too much. If I’d collaborated more – formed partnerships with archaeologists, trained assistants – my impact would have been broader. Don’t isolate yourself out of pride or self-sufficiency.

Fourth, publish. Not just in specialised journals, but in places where people will actually read your work. Communicate. Translate your findings for non-specialists. If you can’t explain why your research matters, no one else will.

Finally, forgive yourself. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll miss opportunities. You’ll be overlooked and undervalued. That’s not your fault. The systems we work within are flawed. Do your best within them, and push to change them when you can.

If you could see one modern development in your field, what would it be?

I’d love to see synchrotron radiation analysis. The idea that you can probe atomic structures non-destructively, at resolutions I could never achieve – that’s extraordinary. I spent years grinding samples and preparing slides. To think you could simply point a beam at a pot and get a complete chemical and crystallographic profile within minutes… that would have saved me decades.

One last question. You’ve had a moment of unexpected humour earlier, but tell us – what’s the most absurd thing that happened during your career?

Oh, there were plenty. Once, at the Agora, a local goat ate my field notes. I’d left them on a table outside the dig house, and this wretched creature just wandered over and started chewing. I chased it halfway across the site, but the damage was done. I had to reconstruct a week’s worth of observations from memory.

Another time, at Metal & Thermit, I was running an experiment on tungsten when the equipment malfunctioned and sprayed molten metal across the laboratory. Nothing caught fire, but my supervisor was convinced I was trying to burn the place down. I wasn’t. I was just… enthusiastic.

Dr. Farnsworth, thank you. Your contributions to archaeological chemistry are immense, even if they’ve been underappreciated. What would you like your final thought to be?

That science is slow work. You don’t change the world overnight. You change it one careful measurement at a time, one properly controlled experiment at a time. The work is unglamorous, often thankless, but it endures. Long after we’re gone, the knowledge remains. That’s enough.

Letters and emails

Since publishing this interview, we’ve received dozens of letters and emails from readers across the globe who want to know more about Dr. Farnsworth’s work and the choices she made throughout her remarkable career. We’ve selected five messages from our community – scientists, educators, and heritage professionals – each offering fresh perspectives and questions about her technical methods, ethical decisions, and what her journey might mean for those pursuing similar paths today.

Fatou Ndiaye, 34, Heritage Conservation Specialist, Dakar, Senegal
Dr. Farnsworth, you mentioned using petrographic analysis to trace pottery back to specific clay sources. I work with West African ceramics where colonial-era documentation is sparse or non-existent. Could you explain how you built your reference library of clay mineralogy without modern databases? Did you physically collect geological samples from quarries around Athens, and how did you account for ancient versus modern extraction sites that might have been depleted or altered over millennia?

Miss Ndiaye, your question gets at one of the most tedious – yet essential – aspects of provenance work that nobody talks about. Building a reference collection of clay sources was slow, dirty, unglamorous labour, but absolutely necessary if you wanted to say anything meaningful about where pottery originated.

Yes, I collected geological samples myself. Hundreds of them. When I arrived in Greece in 1938, there was no comprehensive mineralogical survey of Attic clay deposits. The geological maps were incomplete, and what existed focused on commercial deposits, not ancient sources. So I did what any sensible person would do: I walked.

I’d take the bus or train out from Athens – sometimes hitching rides with farmers – and visit known pottery sites, ancient kiln locations, and exposed clay beds. I carried a geologist’s hammer, sample bags, and a notebook. I’d collect from different depths when possible, because clay composition varies vertically as well as laterally. Then I’d label everything meticulously: location, depth, geological context, proximity to water sources.

Back at the laboratory, I’d prepare thin sections for petrographic analysis. You mount a fragment in resin, grind it down until it’s thirty microns thick – thin enough that light passes through – and examine it under a polarising microscope. The mineral inclusions tell you everything: quartz grain size and angularity, feldspar types, mica content, volcanic fragments. Each deposit has a distinctive mineral signature.

The challenge you’ve identified – distinguishing ancient from modern extraction sites – is real. Clay beds do change. Some deposits were exhausted in antiquity; others have eroded or been covered by sediment. But there are strategies. First, I’d look for ancient kiln waste – pottery wasters, misfired sherds, kiln furniture – near suspected clay sources. Potters don’t transport clay farther than necessary, so wasters suggest nearby extraction.

Second, I’d compare the mineralogy of finished pottery to nearby geological samples. If the inclusions matched, you had a probable source. If they didn’t, the clay came from elsewhere, indicating trade or itinerant potters.

Third – and this is crucial – I didn’t work alone, even if it felt that way sometimes. I corresponded with geologists who knew the local stratigraphy. Nikos Zervos at the Greek Geological Survey was helpful, though our communication was hampered by my dreadful Greek and the war interrupting everything.

For your work in West Africa, I’d suggest the same approach: start local, build your reference library systematically – sorry, I mean methodically – and don’t assume modern sources match ancient ones. Look for kiln sites, wasters, and any geological surveys that exist, even colonial ones, flawed as they may be. The work is slow, but the mineralogy doesn’t lie. Clay remembers its origin, even when the records don’t.

Stefan Müller, 42, Science Policy Researcher, Toronto, Canada
You spent nearly twenty years at Metal & Thermit Corporation doing industrial metallurgy whilst maintaining your archaeological interests on the side. That’s a split many scientists face today – passion projects versus paid work. Looking back, do you think the metallurgical work actually enriched your archaeological chemistry in unexpected ways, or was it purely a financial necessity that delayed your real contributions? I’m curious whether you see value in that fragmented path or only frustration.

Mr. Müller, that’s a harder question than you might imagine, because the honest answer makes me uncomfortable. Yes, it was frustrating. Yes, I resented spending my prime years analysing industrial alloys instead of ancient glazes. But was it purely a waste? No. And that’s what bothers me – because I spent decades telling myself it was.

The metallurgical work at Metal & Thermit taught me things I wouldn’t have learned staying in archaeology. We were developing new ferrous alloys, testing thermal treatments, studying grain structures in steel. That meant mastering metallography – polishing metal samples, etching them with acids, examining microstructures under the microscope. I became extremely good at interpreting what I saw: phase boundaries, inclusion distributions, crystallographic orientations.

When I returned to archaeological work in the 1950s, that expertise proved invaluable. I could examine ancient bronze and iron with a metallographer’s eye, not just a chemist’s. I studied zinc artefacts from Hellenistic contexts and recognised manufacturing signatures – cold working versus casting, annealing temperatures, impurity patterns – that I wouldn’t have caught without the industrial experience.

There’s also this: working in industry kept me sharp. Academia can become insular. You read the same journals, attend the same conferences, talk to the same people. At Metal & Thermit, I was solving practical problems under commercial pressure. If an alloy formulation failed, we couldn’t publish a correction next year – we’d lose the contract. That discipline, that intolerance for sloppy work, made me a better scientist.

But – and here’s the difficult part – I also wonder if I’m rationalising. Perhaps I’m telling myself the industrial years had value because admitting they were wasted time is too painful. I was 44 when the war started, 64 when I left Metal & Thermit. Those are peak productive years for a scientist. What might I have accomplished if I’d had funding and institutional support instead of punching a clock in Jersey City?

I see young women today with grants, laboratory access, tenure-track positions, and I feel both glad and bitter. Glad because they won’t face what I faced. Bitter because I’ll never know what I could have done with those resources.

So to answer your question directly: yes, the fragmented path had unexpected value. Metallurgy enriched my archaeological work in concrete, measurable ways. But would I choose that path again if I could go back? Absolutely not. I’d fight harder for funding, demand recognition, and refuse to let financial necessity dictate my career. The enrichment wasn’t worth the cost.

Mei Lin, 28, PhD Candidate in Materials Science, Singapore
I’m fascinated by your refiring experiments to test the three-stage firing hypothesis for black Attic glaze. How did you control for variables like heating rate, kiln atmosphere composition, and cooling curves with 1940s equipment? Modern kilns have programmable controllers and atmosphere monitors, but you would have been working with far less precision. What was your acceptable margin of error, and how many iterations did it take before you felt confident your results genuinely replicated ancient conditions rather than modern approximations?

Miss Lin, you’ve identified exactly the problem that consumed my thoughts throughout the 1940s. Controlling firing variables with the equipment available then was maddening. We didn’t have programmable controllers or digital thermocouples. We had pyrometric cones – little ceramic pyramids that soften and bend at specific temperatures – and we had our eyes and our logbooks.

For atmosphere control, I used a small muffle furnace with adjustable vents. Oxidising atmosphere was straightforward: vents open, plenty of air circulation. Reducing atmosphere required closing the vents partially and introducing organic material – I used charcoal dust or wood chips – which consumed the available oxygen as it burned. You’d monitor the flame colour through a peephole: a clear, bright flame meant oxidising conditions; a smoky, yellowish flame meant reducing.

But here’s the rub: controlling the degree of reduction was imprecise. I couldn’t measure oxygen partial pressure. I could only infer it from visual cues and the behaviour of the samples. That meant running dozens of experiments under supposedly identical conditions and accepting that the results would vary.

Heating rate was similarly crude. I’d track temperature rise using a series of pyrometric cones with different softening points – say, Cone 022 (586°C), Cone 018 (696°C), Cone 010 (900°C), and so forth. When a cone bent, I knew I’d reached that temperature. But the rate of heating depended on the furnace’s characteristics, electrical supply fluctuations, and even ambient room temperature. I couldn’t programme a precise ramp like you can today.

My acceptable margin of error was probably plus or minus 50°C for temperature and significant variation in atmosphere composition. That sounds terrible by modern standards, but remember: ancient potters didn’t have precision instruments either. They worked by eye, by experience, by the feel of the fire. So my experiments, imprecise as they were, probably approximated ancient conditions better than a perfectly controlled modern kiln would.

How many iterations? Conservatively, I’d say 40 to 50 firing cycles before I published the 1941 paper. Some samples I fired multiple times, adjusting variables each round. I kept detailed notes on every firing: temperature sequence, atmosphere conditions, duration at peak temperature, cooling method. Then I’d examine the results under the microscope and with the spectrograph.

The key was reproducibility, not precision. If I could get the same result three times under nominally identical conditions, I had confidence. If the results varied wildly, I knew I hadn’t controlled something properly.

Modern equipment is wonderful – I’d have killed for a programmable kiln – but don’t underestimate observation and iteration. Ancient potters produced magnificent work without thermocouples. I just tried to match their empirical knowledge with mine.

Jacob Miller, 39, Secondary School Chemistry Teacher, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dr. Farnsworth, imagine you’d been born thirty years later and arrived at the Agora excavation in 1968 instead of 1938, with access to early electron microscopes and better funding for women scientists post-war. Do you think you would have made even greater discoveries with superior technology, or was there actually an advantage to working in that primitive era when the field was so new that you could define its methods without institutional resistance or established orthodoxy telling you what was “proper” archaeological science?

Mr. Miller, that’s a fascinating hypothetical, and I’ve actually thought about it more than I care to admit. Would I have accomplished more with better technology and post-war opportunities? Almost certainly. Would the work have been better in some fundamental sense? I’m not sure.

Consider what I had in 1938: a decent spectrograph, X-ray diffraction equipment that was state-of-the-art for its time, a petrographic microscope, and – most importantly – complete freedom to define what archaeological chemistry should be. Nobody was telling me, “That’s not how we do provenance studies” or “Your sampling protocol doesn’t meet committee standards,” because there were no standards. The field didn’t exist yet.

By 1968, archaeological science was becoming institutionalised. There were established methodologies, peer review expectations, funding committees. If I’d arrived then with an electron microscope, I’d have produced higher-resolution data, certainly. I could have examined glaze microstructures at nanometre scales, identified trace elements at parts-per-million concentrations, mapped elemental distributions across interfaces.

But I also would have faced gatekeepers. Programme officers asking why my approach differed from established protocols. Reviewers demanding I cite precedents that didn’t exist when I was actually doing the pioneering work. Younger colleagues – probably men – telling me how archaeological chemistry “should” be done, based on methods I’d helped establish thirty years earlier.

There’s a real advantage to working in an intellectual wilderness. You’re not constrained by orthodoxy because there is no orthodoxy. Every question is open, every method is experimental. That freedom is exhilarating. It’s also terrifying, because you have no guidance, no safety net. But it allows for creative leaps that become harder once a field matures.

The funding question is trickier. Better funding in 1968 would have meant more samples, more experiments, more publications. I could have trained students, built a research programme, established a laboratory. That institutional infrastructure matters enormously for long-term impact.

So here’s my answer: I’d have produced more data arriving in 1968, but I’m not convinced the fundamental insights would have been deeper. The three-stage firing process, the identification of rose madder, the connection between clay mineralogy and provenance – those discoveries came from asking the right questions, not from having the fanciest equipment.

What I really needed wasn’t better technology or a different era. I needed institutional support, professional respect, and recognition that interdisciplinary work between chemistry and archaeology was legitimate scholarship. That would have mattered more than any electron microscope. The technology enables answers, but only after someone asks the right questions. I was good at asking questions. I just wish more people had been listening.

Valentina Correa, 51, Museum Curator, Madrid, Spain
You spoke about archaeologists treating sample requests as though you were “destroying the Parthenon itself.” That tension between preservation and scientific inquiry still exists in museums today. Did you ever encounter an artefact you desperately wanted to analyse but chose not to because it was too precious or politically sensitive? How did you make those ethical decisions, and were there moments when you regretted either sampling something or walking away?

Miss Correa, yes. There were objects I desperately wanted to analyse but couldn’t – or shouldn’t have – touched. Those decisions still haunt me.

The worst was in the early 1950s at Corinth. They’d excavated fragments of what appeared to be fifth-century BC white-ground lekythoi – funerary vessels with extraordinarily delicate painted decoration on a white slip background. The pigments were fugitive, barely clinging to the surface. One piece showed traces of what I suspected was Egyptian blue, a copper-calcium-silicate pigment that would have been significant to identify definitively in that context.

I requested a tiny sample – perhaps two milligrams from an already-damaged edge. The curator refused. He said the piece was too important, too fragile. We argued. I explained that without chemical analysis, we were just guessing about the pigments. He countered that my sampling would destroy irreplaceable evidence of the original painted surface.

Here’s the thing: he was right. The fragment was unique. My analytical methods, careful as they were, required removing material. Once taken, that sample was gone forever. But I was also right – without analysis, crucial information about ancient painting techniques would remain unknown.

I walked away. I still don’t know if that was wisdom or cowardice. The fragment sits in a museum storage room somewhere, unsampled and unstudied. Perhaps modern non-destructive techniques have analysed it by now. Perhaps it’s still waiting. I’ll never know what pigments were used, and that ignorance gnaws at me.

Another time – this one I regret – I did sample something I shouldn’t have. It was a small bronze figurine from the Athenian Agora, Roman period. I wanted to study the metallurgy, so I took a scraping from the base where I thought it wouldn’t show. But my sampling damaged the patina, creating a visible scar. The archaeologist was furious, and rightly so. I’d been careless, impatient.

How did I make these ethical decisions? Badly, sometimes. I tried to balance scientific value against preservation. I asked: Is this object unique or one of many similar pieces? Is the information I’d gain worth the damage I’d cause? Will anyone study this object with better methods in the future?

But honestly, I also made decisions based on who had the power to say no. If a curator was accommodating, I sampled freely. If they resisted, I often deferred – not because the science was less important, but because I lacked the institutional authority to insist.

That’s shameful to admit, but it’s true. Women in my position learned not to push too hard. We were guests in male-dominated institutions, and guests don’t make demands. Should I have fought harder? Probably. But I was tired of fighting.

Reflection

Dr. Anna Marie Farnsworth passed away in 1991 at the age of 95, having witnessed nearly a century of scientific transformation – from hand-cranked spectrographs to satellite imaging of archaeological sites. Yet for all that technological progress, her story reminds us how little has changed in other ways: the invisibility of technical expertise compared to dramatic discoveries, the professional fragmentation faced by women scientists, the tension between preservation and knowledge-seeking that still troubles heritage professionals today.

Throughout this conversation, several themes emerged with striking clarity. Farnsworth’s perseverance across a fractured career path – from university laboratories to industrial chemistry and back to archaeological fieldwork – illustrates the extraordinary resilience required of women in mid-twentieth-century science. Her insistence that “chemistry speaks when artefacts stay silent” captures the bridging work she performed between disciplines, translating material evidence into historical understanding through spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and meticulous observation.

The historical record surrounding Farnsworth is frustratingly sparse. We know she received the first Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology in 1980, yet few details survive about her teaching, her daily laboratory practices, or her collaborations. Her major publications on black Attic glaze (1941) and intentional red glaze (1958) are cited in archaeological literature, but her methodological innovations – the undocumented tricks, the field observations, the iterative experiments she described here – exist only in fragments. How much of her work was incorporated into others’ research without proper attribution? We may never know.

What Farnsworth revealed in these exchanges was her complexity: the regret alongside vindication, the admission of mistakes alongside justified pride, the acknowledgment that her reticence may have cost her recognition she deserved. She corrected no major historical misrepresentations because history largely forgot to represent her at all.

Today, archaeological science thrives as an established field. Museums employ conservation scientists; excavations routinely include materials analysis; non-destructive techniques allow researchers to probe artefacts without the sampling dilemmas Farnsworth faced. Researchers studying ancient ceramics still cite her foundational work on Attic glazes, building upon the chemical fingerprinting methods she pioneered. Heritage science programmes at universities worldwide teach principles she helped establish – even if they rarely mention her name.

Perhaps that’s the most poignant legacy: her methods endured whilst her memory faded. But in recovering voices like Farnsworth’s, we do more than correct historical oversights. We remind ourselves that scientific progress depends on patient, unglamorous work – on those who ask precise questions and refuse to accept guesses when evidence can provide answers. The atoms still remember what historians forgot. Our task is to listen.

Who have we missed?

This series is all about recovering the voices history left behind – and I’d love your help finding the next one. If there’s a woman in STEM you think deserves to be interviewed in this way – whether a forgotten inventor, unsung technician, or overlooked researcher – please share her story.

Email me at voxmeditantis@gmail.com or leave a comment below with your suggestion – even just a name is a great start. Let’s keep uncovering the women who shaped science and innovation, one conversation at a time.

Editorial Note: This conversation with Dr. Anna Marie Farnsworth is a dramatised reconstruction created for educational and commemorative purposes. Whilst Farnsworth’s biographical details, scientific achievements, and historical context are drawn from available records – including her published research on black Attic glaze (1941), intentional red glaze (1958), and rose madder identification, as well as her work at the Fogg Art Museum and the Athenian Agora excavation – her specific words, personality, and reflections presented here are imagined. This format allows us to explore her contributions and the challenges faced by women scientists of her era in an engaging, human way whilst honouring the factual foundation of her remarkable career.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved. | 🌐 Translate