Gladys Davidson Weinberg

Gladys Davidson Weinberg was a U.S. archaeologist and daughter of Hebrew literary scholar Israel *Davidson and Carrie Dreyfuss Davidson, editor of Outlook magazine of the United Synagogue of America's Women's League. Weinberg was raised in New York City and received her B.A. from New York University in 1930 and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1935 for a dissertation on the excavations at Corinth. In 1931, she joined the Johns Hopkins University expedition to Olynthus and continued her research in Greece from 1932 to 1939 as a Fellow of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and then as a member of the American School Excavations at Corinth. From 1940 to 1943, she worked as assistant curator of ancient art at the Princeton Art Museum. After marrying fellow archaeologist Saul Weinberg, she worked as translator and librarian in the Foreign Service Auxiliary of the U.S. State Department in Istanbul and Athens (1943–45), and then as librarian of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (1946–48). Serving as editor of the magazine Archaeology (1952–67), Gladys Weinberg conducted excavations searching for ancient glass factories in the eastern Mediterranean, becoming a leading authority on glassmaking technology in ancient Greece, Crete, and Israel. Cofounder of the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, after 1962 she served as its curator of ancient art, then as assistant director and research fellow; she also founded and edited the museum's annual, Muse, from 1966–77.

In addition to publishing numerous articles, Weinberg coauthored and/or edited several important archaeological publications, including Small Finds from the Pnyx, I (1943); Corinth: The Minor Objects (1952); The Antikythera Wreck Reconsidered (1965); Excavations at Jalame, Site of a Glass Factory in Late Roman Palestine (1988); and Selected Glass Vessels in Ancient Greece (1992). She was made an honorary life member of the American Association of University Women and the Archaeological Institute of America. In 1985, Gladys Davidson Weinberg, together with her husband Saul Weinberg, received the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America. The following year, she became the recipient of the Percia Schimmel Award for Archaeological Exploration in Biblical Lands from the Israel Museum. The Saul and Gladys Weinberg Papers can be found in the archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.