In a combination which today seems curious he was both a great lover of natural beauty and
In a combination, which today seems curious, he was both a great lover of natural beauty and wild life, and an enthusiastic shot. In addition to his professional writing, he also leaves a number of notable and very readable publications for the interested layman, including Foundations in the Dust (1947; revised 1980), Early Anatolia (Pelican Books, 1956), Mounds of the Ancient Near East (1963) and Ancient Turkey (1989).Seton Lloyd was a tall, imposing figure, who always dressed well. Both his regular preliminary reports, latterly mostly in the early numbers of Anatolian Studies, and his prompt final reports were concise, clear and meticulous, illustrated by his own beautifully drawn and instantly recognisable plans and reconstructions. But it did mark the beginning of intensive research in Urartu, which has expanded beyond recognition in the last 30 years.In his retirement, Lloyd remained very active in the affairs of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the Ankara Institute.
He served as Honorary Secretary to the latter from 1962 to 1972, and in 1975 was elected President, serving until 1981. He was also President of the Iraq School from 1979 to 1982.No word on Lloyd would be complete without reference to his publications. Unlike so many of his profession, he never allowed an overwhelming backlog of material to accumulate. His years at the institute, from 1962 to 1969, were a high point in the study of Near Eastern archaeology.At this time he inaugurated a final project in collaboration with Charles Burney in the form of an expedition to Urartu, the Iron Age kingdom of Ararat centring on Lake Van in eastern Turkey. Though well conceived, the project unfortunately ran into difficulties and, after a very successful first season at the site of Kayalidere in the province of Mus, it was unable to continue.
Seton Lloyd was appointed and took up his post in 1962, not without some diffidence, since he had no experience of teaching. He need not have worried, for he had no difficulty in communicating his deep archaeological knowledge and enthusiasm. Among his initial activities were the Polatli sounding, which produced a very important pottery sequence; the Sultantepe excavations, where he had the good luck to hit a major collection of cuneiform tablets forming an Assyrian provincial library; and his survey of Alanya castle.The major effort of his Ankara tenure was the excavation of Beyce Sultan, six seasons conducted in collaboration with James Mellaart. Many British archaeologists remember with pleasure the warm family atmosphere which the Lloyds created in the institute.Adapting well to the parsimonious conditions of British archaeological provisions, Lloyd inaugurated a number of limited but carefully planned operations, which produced valuable and significant results. Though he always confessed himself disappointed with Beyce for its comparative lack of finds, including an absence of written material, the architectural remains which he recovered and interpreted were dramatic enough, and the excavations added a new province to Anatolian archaeology, linking for the first time the interior plateau with the west coast.By good fortune, about the time that Lloyd and his wife decided that their nomadic expatriate life should cease, the Professorship of Western Asiatic Archaeology in London fell vacant.
