Helen Hughes-Brock
Helen Hughes-Brock is an independent scholar working in the archaeology of the Minoan civilization of Crete and Mycenaean Greece.
Personal life
She was born in Montreal in 1938 to Everett Cherrington Hughes and Helen MacGill Hughes. She was educated at Regina Coeli, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, Cambridgeshire High School for Girls and Somerville College, University of Oxford. She was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1990. She lives in Oxford with her husband, Sebastian Brock.Scholarship
Hughes-Brock is a respected scholar of beads and seals in particular. Her principal interests are beads, seals and the finds of amber on Minoan and Mycenaean sites. She participated in British excavations at Palaikastro and the Mycenae Cult Centre and with the University of Minnesota at Nichoria and has contributed to reports on other excavations. She has served on the Bead Study Trust and the International Committee for the Study of Amber in Archaeology. She has also occasionally participated in the work of her husband, Sebastian Brock, on Syriac studies. In the 1960s and 1970s on their journeys in the Syriac heartlands of S.E. Turkey, Syria and Iraq she took photographs of places which are now modernized, damaged or altogether destroyed. These have now been digitized at Beth Mardutho Syriac Institute at Piscataway, New Jersey.Selected publications
Beads
- 'Greek beads of the Mycenaean period : The age of the heroines of Greek tradition and mythology’. In L.D. Sciama and J.B. Eicher, Beads and Bead Makers: Gender, Material Culture and Meaning, 247–71.
- ‘Mycenaean beads: gender and social contexts’, OxfJournArch 18, 277–96.
- ‘The Mycenaean Greeks, master bead-makers — major results since the time of Horace Beck’. In I. C. Glover, H. Hughes-Brock and J. Henderson, Ornaments from the Past — Bead Studies after Beck, 10–22.
- Contributions to The Bead Study Trust, Catalogue of the Beck Collection at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge part 1: Europe. Bead Study Trust, 1997.
- The Bead Study Trust Newsletter, major contributor of annotated lists to ‘Recently Published Work on Beads’ section, also occasional news items and reviews, nos. 2–50.
- ‘A useful model for bead surveys,’ Bead Study Trust Newsletter 44, 2.
Beads and seals together
- ‘Seals and beads: their shapes and materials compared.’ In Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel Beiheft 5, 105–16.
- ‘Close encounters of interesting kinds. Relief beads and glass seals: design and craftsmen.’ In C. M. Jackson and E. C. Wager, Vitreous Materials in the Late Bronze Age Aegean. Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology 9, 126–50.;.
- ‘Exotic materials and objects sent to — and from? — the Bronze Age Aegean. Some recent work and some observations.’ In A. Vianello, Exotica in the Prehistoric Mediterranean., 99–114. .
- ‘The waz-lily and the priest’s axe: can relief-beads tell us something?’ In Y. Galanakis, T. Wilkinson and J. Bennet, AΘΥΡΜΑΤΑ.….in Honour of Susan Sherratt, 105–16.
- ‘Two cushions, a Bes, a boar and a bead; new “discoveries” in the Aegean collection at the Ashmolean’ in N. Sekunda, Wonders Lost and Found: A Celebration of the Archaeological Work of Professor Michael Vickers, pp. 8–17.
- ‘Minoan engraved ringstones and a unique polyonymous sealstone with ramifications’ in B. Davis and R. Laffineur, ΝΕΩΤΕΡΟΣ : Studies in Aegean Bronze Age Art and Archaeology in Honor of Professor John G. Younger on the Occasion of his Retirement. Aegaeum 44, pp. 141–153.
Seals
- Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel VI: Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum . Olga Krzyszkowska AmerJournArch 115/3, www.ajaonline 115/3, 2011, www.ajaonline.org/book-review/966, .
- ‘Two sealstones from Mochlos’, Kretika Chronika 1963, 352–5.
- ‘The early Cretan white seals in the Ashmolean Museum, ancient and modern: some enigmatic materials’. In Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel Beiheft 3, 79–89.
- ‘Echt oder falsch? Trials, rehabilitations and banishments of some suspects in the Ashmolean collection’. In Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel Beiheft 6, 107–121.
- ‘The many facets of seal research and the contribution of the CMS.’ In Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel Beiheft 8, 225–37.
- ‘Seals of Bronze Age Greece’. In Y. Galanakis, The Aegean World: A Guide to the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean Antiquities in the Ashmolean Museum, 152–65.
- Review of Paul Yule, 'Early Cretan Seals,' in The Classical Review 33.1 :88-89.
Amber
- ‘Amber in the Mycenaean world’, Annual of the British School at Athens 69, 145–74.
- ‘Amber and the Mycenaeans.’ In J. M. Todd, Studies in Baltic Amber. Journal of Baltic Studies XVI, special issue, 257–67.
- ‘Amber bead sensation from the Ukraine’ Bead Study Trust Newsletter 29, 4.
- ‘Mycenaean amber beads and ornaments: what can we learn from their shapes — and from one another?’ In Unione Internazionale delle Scienze Preistoriche e Protostoriche 1996: atti del XIII congresso, Forlì 1996, vol. 6/1, 491–6.
- ‘Amber in the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age: some problems and perspectives.’ In C. W. Beck and J. Bouzek, Amber in Archaeology: Proc. of the Second International Conference on Amber in Archaeology, 1990, 219–29.
- ‘Amber beads in archaeology: publications since ca. 1993. In C. W. Beck, I. B. Loze and J. M. Todd, Amber in Archaeology: Proc. of the Fourth International Conference on Amber in Archaeology, 2001, 236–55.
- ‘Baltic amber: two new conference volumes’ Bead Study Trust Newsletter 42, 3.
- ‘Amber and some other travellers in the Bronze Age Aegean and Europe.’ In A. Dakouri-Hild and S. Sherratt, Autochthon: Papers Presented to O.T.P.K. Dickinson on the Occasion of his Retirement. BritArchReports – Internat. Series 1432, 301–16.
- ‘Amber in archaeology: publications since ca. 2000.’ In A. Palavestra, C. W. Beck and J. M. Todd, Amber in Archaeology: Proc. of the Fifth International Conference on Amber in Archaeology, 2006., 102–8.
- Harding, A., & Hughes-Brock, H.. ‘Mycenaeans in Bavaria? Amber and gold from the Bronze Age site of Bernstorf’. Antiquity, 91, 1382-1385. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.147
- In preparation: catalogue of Aegean amber finds for expanded English edition of Bursztyn w Kulturze Mykeńskiej by Janusz Czebreszuk
Contributions to excavation reports
- ‘The beads, loomweights, etc.’ In J. N. Coldstream, Knossos: The Sanctuary of Demeter, 114–23.
- ‘Miscellaneous small finds’. In W.A. McDonald et al., Excavations at Nichoria III: Dark Age and Byzantine Occupation, 292–4, 312–5.
- ‘Terracotta and miscellaneous small finds’. In W.A. McDonald and N.C. Wilkie. Excavations at Nichoria II: The Bronze Age Occupation, 625–37, 651–73.
- ‘Asine Chamber Tomb I:1 — the small finds’. In R. Hägg et al., Asine III, fasc.1., 69–80.
- ‘Notes on sealing, stoppers, faience bead. In Sparta: Menelaion I by H.W. Catling with others, 289–302 passim.
Miscellaneous
- Review article; ‘Ivory and Related Materials and some recent work on Bronze Age relations between Crete and the Aegean’, Discussions in Egyptology 23, 23–37.
- ‘Animal, vegetable, mineral: some evidence from small objects.' In A. Karetsou, Κρήτη − Αίγυπτος. Πολιτισμικοί Δεσμοί Τριών Χιλιετιών, Μελέτες , 120–7.
- ‘Helen Waterhouse and her “Priest-Kings?” paper’, Cretan Studies 7, 89–98.
- In Bead Study Trust Newsletter, selected items:
- *‘War losses from Berlin museums’, 28, 12.
- *‘Looting of archaeological sites — a story with a happy ending’ , 28, 14.
- *‘Don’t trust appearances! A “bead” in Hungary which wasn't’, 35, 14.
- *‘Who were the invaders?’ Foreigners’ beads in early medieval Greece’, , 40, 10–11.
- *rev. of M. Vickers and A. Kakhidze, Pichvnari— Result of Excavations Conducted by the Joint British-Georgian Pichvnari Expedition 1998–2002: Greeks and Colchians on the East Coast of the Black Sea, 44, 12.
- Review of Pauline Johnstone, "The Byzantine Tradition in Church Embroidery." Journal of Hellenic Studies 89:196.
- ‘The renewal of monastic life for women in a monastery in Tur Abdin’, Sobornost 7:4.
- English translation of Guide to the Munich Antikensammlungen and by Dieter Ohly.
- Review of E.J.W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles, in Antiquity 66/250, 271–2.
Edited and co-edited volumes
- Knossos: A Labyrinth of History. Papers Presented in Honour of Sinclair Hood. BritSchAthens 1994.
- Papers presented at conference in honour of Sinclair Hood in 1994 in Cretan Studies 5.
- Cretan Studies 7 in memory of R.F. Willetts.
- Ornaments from the Past — Bead Studies after Beck..