Iole Bovio Marconi: a pioneer of female emancipation

Jole Bovio was “a gentle lady with a suave air, who certainly did not denote in her appearance the internationally renowned scholar, the educated and prepared archaeologist”: petite, her round face framed by her white, curly hair. She was born in Rome on 21 January 1897, her father Giovanni was a high-ranking Piedmontese officer and her mother Giulia Beccaria was descended from the more famous Cesare. In 1921, she had graduated in Literature with a thesis on Roman topography at La Sapienza University. She had graduated from the Royal School of Archaeology in Rome. Subsequently, from 1923 to 1924, she had been a scholarship holder at the Italian Archaeological School in Athens, where she had met her colleague and future husband, the Veronese Pirro Marconi. Back in Italy in 1926, Jole and Pirro had married, and she had also adopted her husband’s surname.

Jole Bovio was a pioneer of female archaeology in Sicily, where the couple moved at the invitation of Paolo Orsi in 1927. In Palermo, Pirro Marconi was director of the National Museum of Palermo and the Antiquities Office of Western Sicily from 1929 to 1932, while his wife was called as inspector in the same office. From that moment on, Jole dedicated herself to archaeological excavation campaigns in the provinces of Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento, taking small steps towards a brilliant career, also in view of the enormous difficulties that a woman at the time faced in undertaking professions generally reserved for men. Iron will and determination were not lacking in Jole Marconi Bovio, an ante litteram feminist, ever since she was a young girl, even before the advent of fascism, she had enthusiastically joined the battle for women to obtain the right to vote. In Sicily, Jole worked tirelessly, both excavating and cataloguing artefacts. First at Boccadifalco, on the outskirts of Palermo, she uncovered the remains of a Bronze Age village and collective tombs in grottoes; then at Monte Castellaccio (Termini Imerese) she excavated the acropolis and some caves.