Barbara Denise Craig (née Chapman; 22 October 1915 – 25 January 2005) was a British archaeologist, classicist, and academic, specialising in classical pottery.
[2] She graduated in 1938 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree, having gained first class honours in both Mods and Greats.
There, she studied the historical background to Greek lyric poetry and the ancient history of Sicily.
Having moved away from the regular tourist sites, she found herself in the interior of the island where a large number of Italy's arms factories were based.
Unable to convince a police officer that an attractive, young woman with binoculars was not spying in the factories, she was arrested.
Luckily for her, the local police chief believed her account of being a tourist and scholar with a passion for birdwatching, and she was released.
[1] This was the beginning of two decades spent in various foreign countries, with Barbara acting as hostess at any official occasion.
[1] In 1954, she was elected to the Katharine and Leonard Woolley Fellowship in Archaeology at Somerville College, Oxford, her alma mater.
[7] She met her future husband, James Craig, when they were both at the British School at Rome in 1938;[3] she was studying and he was the BSR's secretary and librarian.