Elizabeth French

Elizabeth French
A grey-haired woman, facing the camera, in a t-shirt with a cartoon of the Warrior Vase from Mycenae.
Born
Elizabeth Bayard Wace

(1931-01-19)19 January 1931
London, England
Died10 June 2021(2021-06-10) (aged 90)
Known forExcavations at Mycenae; study of Mycenaean terracotta figurines
Spouse
(m. 1959; div. 1975)
ParentAlan Wace (father)
Academic background
Alma materNewnham College, Cambridge
University College London
ThesisThe Development of Mycenaean Terracotta Figurines (1961)
Doctoral advisorMartin Robertson
Academic work
DisciplineArchaeology
Sub-disciplineMycenaean Greek archaeology
InstitutionsRoyal Masonic School for Girls, Rickmansworth
University of Manchester
British School at Athens
University of Cambridge

Elizabeth Bayard French FSA (née Wace; 19 January 1931 – 10 June 2021), also known as Lisa French, was a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in Mycenaean Greece, especially pottery and terracotta figurines and the site of Mycenae. She was the first woman to serve as director of the British School at Athens (BSA).

Wace spent much of her early life in Greece, where her father, Alan Wace, was director of the BSA. She attended her first archaeological excavations at the age of eight, at Mycenae. During the Second World War, she was evacuated from Greece to the United States, and subsequently lived briefly in Egypt before finishing her education at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Newnham College, Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge, she studied archaeological conservation at University College London and worked as a secondary school teacher while completing a part-time doctorate at London, which she was awarded in 1961.

Wace married the archaeologist David French in 1959. She excavated over many years at Mycenae and at other sites in Greece and Turkey, where she lived with her husband at the British Institute at Ankara. After her divorce in 1975, she returned to the UK, where she worked at the University of Manchester from 1976 until 1989. As director of the BSA between 1989 and 1994, she completed further fieldwork and excavation at Mycenae and published accounts of the finds from the site. She returned to Cambridge from 1994, where she lectured on Mycenaean pottery, and died in 2021.