SERVIA I ANGLO-HELLENIC RESCUE EXCAVATIONS 1971-73 directed by KATERINA RHOMIOPOULOU AND CRESSIDA RIDLEY by CRESSIDA RIDLEY, K. A. WARDLE AND CATHARINE A. MOULD With additional contributions by Jill Carington Smith, Rupert Housely, Richard Hubbard, ‘Jonathan Musgrave and Bill Phelps Production Editor: Rayna Andrew SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME NO. 32 Published by THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS 2000Cressida Ridley 1917-1998 Cressida came to archaeology relatively late in life through participating in the field work of the local archaeological group in Wiltshire near her home. Of a generation when a formal higher education was still considered exceptional, especially for women, she nevertheless had all the instincts of a scholar and researcher from an early age. A keen intellect, a vora- cious appetite for information and an outspoken advocacy of truth and logic, could all have guided her in any one of several directions. Time and chance brought her to Greek prehis- tory via a distinction in the Postgraduate Diploma in European Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, London, under the guidance of Professor J. D. Evans. Awarded a Scholar- ship by the British School at Athens to begin her research into the Macedonian Late Neolithic, she worked hard to master modern Greek — spending many months in Thessaloniki under the tuition of Niki Harissiades and soon became a familiar visitor to the museums and collec- tions of northern Greece where she recorded and drew hundreds of examples of the varied pottery of the period, She joined in many of the excavations of the British School — Saliagos, Lefkandi, Sitagroi and Myrtos — learning the skills of the excavator while applying her own acute powers of observation and rigorous chain of argument to problems of stratigraphy. Chance, too, brought her to Servia, to conduct with Katerina Rhomiopoulou, then in charge ofthe IZ’ Ephoria, the rescue excavations described in this volume, which proved so reward- ing that they provided material for years of study and evaluation. Practical and pragmatic, she solved most of the problems associated with any excavation without fuss, whether it was raising the funds, gathering a skilled team of archaeologists, searching out workmen to whom archaeological excavation and women directors were still a novelty, or organising the study of large quantities of varied material. Throughout the excavation she felt and acknowledged a special debt to Yiannis Papadopoulos who had leamt excavation techniques with Bob Rodden and David Clark when they explored the early neolithic site near his village, Nea Nikomedeia, and became foreman to excavations at Sitagroi, Kastrtsa, Assiros and Knossos, as well as Servia. Once the excavations were completed in 1973, she made an extended visit to Greece each summer and autumn, helping on the excavations of others — at Assiros and Lefkandi in particular, and continuing the painstaking sorting and classification of the pottery and other finds from Servia, by now housed in the museum at Florina. Many of us who worked there with her remember with great affection the warmth of her welcome as well as the hours of work in the museum there — often in Spartan conditions since the central heating had hardly worked since the museum was built and winter comes early to this north western corner of Macedonia. For much of the time however, this was for Cressida a solitary task, undertaken with determination and single mindedness.