Archeological "Amateur"
"Amateur": one who loves, who engages in the pursuit of knowledge or skill for the sheer love of it.
The time-honored title has fallen on bad days, fuzzy usage encrusting it with misleading connotations of bumbling, though well meaning, superficiality. But the likes of WILLIAM J. BRYANT '25, a rare breed in a hustling world, restore it to rightful esteem.
It was in 1924 that Bryant, still an undergraduate, first encountered the fine Roman ruins of southern France and, as he recalls, "a spark was struck." Eight years later, on a visit to Tarragona on Spain's Costa Brava, he saw the site of an ancient Roman amphitheater, buried under about 50 feet of debris, and, wondering what history lay beneath, resolved "that some day I would do something about it."
From these two events evolved the enduring passion of a Vermont Yankee, engaged professionally in the manufacture of machine tools, for Spanish archeology. And from this concern have issued a succession of informed and informative books on Spain and its history and the William J. Bryant Foundation, dedicated to the promotion and support of archeological research.
Bryant's curiosity about what lay beneath the rubble at Tarragona was not to be assuaged until after the upheavals of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Faithful to his resolve, he made contact in 1946 with the Spanish Minister of Fine Arts and, subsequently, with the Director of Museums at Tarragona, who agreed to undertake the excavation and study of the amphitheater site, an endeavor which was to take ten years and produce the serendipitous find of a Visigothic church under the visible Romanesque edifice.
But meanwhile, in 1950 the Foundation was established, projects proliferated, and Bryant's knowledge of the ancient history of the Iberian Peninsula, invaded successively by Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Vandals, and Arabs, grew apace. The Foundation purchased a small Roman theater in Alcudia on the island of Mallorca and a nearby 17th-century manor house, which as "Casa Bryant" provides a residence for archeologists and students working at digs on the island, a center for a summer school sponsored by Manhattanville College, and a site for the municipal museum with its collection of artifacts. The Spanish-American Archeological Center for the Ballearic Islands was organized, with the top echelons of the Spanish archeological establishment comprising its advisory board.
Since its formation, the Foundation has sponsored investigations of some 15 sites on the islands and along the Spanish coast from the French border, around Gilbraltar, to locations near the Atlantic ports of Cadiz and Huelva. Professor Norman A. Doenges of Dartmouth's Classics Department directed excavations in the walled city of Ullastret on the Costa Brava during the summers of 1964 and '65, unearthing a quantity of fine Greek material in the process.
Bryant considers his Foundation's most significant find a large Temple of Hercules discovered at the site of old Carteia near Gibraltar during one of several seasons' search for Tartessus, the elusive "lost civilization" of southern Spain, alluded to by Greek and Roman writers and, among several Biblical references, as Jonah's destination when he was intercepted by the whale
In addition to subsidizing excavations and maintaining Casa Bryant, the Foundation has over the years published several volumes on Greek pottery uncovered in Spain and Portugal and on findings at archeological digs in Florida and the Caribbean area (Bryant was co-author of two of the latter), and branched into Vermont history, another absorbing interest of the insatiably curious Yankee "amateur."
Bryant has edited, under the title Cartas Sobre El AnfiteatroTarragonese, excerpts from letters spanning 25 years about the Tarragona excavations. Fie has also written Flames of Life, TheMagic of Spain, Old Indians at Cape Canaveral, and Adventuresin Spanish Archeology, illustrated almost entirely with his own striking color photographs. In preparation is a description of the Bryant Spanish Collection of some 3000 volumes which he has over a period of years presented to Baker Library, an institution he serves devotedly as chairman of the Friends of the Library.
Caribbean culture is yet another object of fascination for Bryant, who has housed an impressive collection of books, sculpture, paintings, and ancient artifacts at Florida Technological University in Orlando, where he can enjoy them during annual respites from Vermont's winter climate.
A modest and unassuming man, Bryant calls himself a "dilettante," which in the strict etymological sense of "one who delights in" he is. He disclaims fluency, but reads widely in Spanish and carries on regular bi-lingual correspondence; he disavows the broad learning which is clearly evident in his speech and writing. His contributions to human knowledge in the fields he patronizes he ascribes to "too much curiosity." He notes regretfully the Foundation's inability to bestow grants or support research in other areas than archeology and occasionally responds to appeals for funds with counter-pleas for support for the Bryant Foundation's work.
The distance may be great from the Vermont hills where the Bryants live - and where their geologist son Bruce '5l was raised - to the Spanish coast or from machine tools to archeological research, but the spark struck almost 50 years ago in France burns bright. And, with the "lost civilization" still elusive and remains of ancient cultures still hidden beneath the rubble, William J. Bryant continues to grace the honored role of "amateur."
