Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978), was a leading archaeologist of
NeolithicThe Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BCE in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age...
culture in the
Fertile CrescentThe Fertile Crescent is a region in the Near East, incorporating the Levant and Mesopotamia, and often incorrectly extended to Egypt. Mesopotamia is considered the cradle of civilization and saw the development of the earliest human civilizations and is the birthplace of writing and the wheel.The...
. She is best known for her excavations in
JerichoJericho is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian Territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate, and has a population of over 20,000 Palestinians. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest...
in 1952-1958.
Biography
Kathleen Kenyon was the eldest daughter of Sir Frederic Kenyon, a
BibleThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
scholar and later director of the
British MuseumThe British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from...
. She studied at
St Paul's Girls' SchoolSt Paul's Girls' School is a senior independent school, located in Hammersmith, London, England.-History:In 1904 a new day school for girls was established by the trustees of the Dean Colet Foundation , which had run St Paul's School for boys since the sixteenth century...
, read history at
Somerville College, OxfordSomerville College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, and was one of the first women's colleges to be founded there...
, England, and became the first woman president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society. In 1962, Kenyon was appointed Principal of St. Hugh's College, Oxford. On her retirement in 1973, she was appointed a
DBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions...
. Kenyon never married.
Archaeological career
Kathleen Kenyon's first field experience was as a photographer for the pioneering excavations at
Great ZimbabweThe Great Zimbabwe, or "stone buildings", is the name given to the stone ruins spread out over a 722 hectare area within the modern-day country of Zimbabwe, which itself is named after the ruins. It is near the town of Masvingo, which before majority rule was called Fort Victoria...
in 1929, led by Gertrude Caton-Thompson. Returning to England, Kenyon joined the archaeological couple Mortimer and Tessa
WheelerBrigadier Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH, CIE, MC, FBA, FSA , was one of the best-known British archaeologists of the twentieth century.-Education and career:...
on their excavation of the Romano-British settlement of
VerulamiumVerulamium was an ancient town in Roman Britain. It was sited in the southwest of the modern city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, Great Britain. A large portion of the Roman city remains unexcavated, being now park and agricultural land, though much has been built upon...
(St Albans), 20 miles north of London. Working there each summer between 1930 and 1935, Kenyon directed the excavation of the Roman theatre. In the years 1931 to 1934 Kenyon worked simultaneously at
SamariaSamaria, or the Shomron is a term used for a mountainous region roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank.- Etymology :...
, then located in the British Mandated Territory of Palestine, with John and Grace Crowfoot. There she cut a stratigraphic trench across the summit of the mound and down the northern and southern slopes, exposing the Iron II to the Roman period stratigraphic sequence of the site. In addition to providing crucial dating material for the Iron Age stratigraphy of Palestine, she obtained key stratified data for the study of Eastern
terra sigilata ware.
In 1934 Kenyon was closely associated with the Wheelers in the foundation of the Institute of Archaeology of
University College LondonUniversity College London is a British university institution and a constituent college of the University of London, based primarily in Bloomsbury, London...
. From 1936 to 1939 she carried out important excavations at the
Jewry WallThe Jewry Wall in Leicester, England is the remaining wall of the public baths of Roman Leicester along with foundations of the baths, which are laid out in front of the wall.The wall is nearly 2000 years old, and is a rare example of Roman walling...
in the city of Leicester. During the Second World War, Kenyon served as Divisional Commander of the Red Cross in Hammersmith, London, and later as Acting Director and Secretary of the
Institute of ArchaeologyThe Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London , England. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury....
of the University of London.
After the war, she excavated in
SouthwarkSouthwark, or the Borough, is an area of south-east London in the London Borough of Southwark, situated 1.5 miles east of Charing Cross.-Naming:Southwark is the area of London immediately south of London Bridge...
, at
The WrekinThe Wrekin is a hill in east Shropshire, England. It is located some 7 km west of Telford, on the border between the unitary authorities of Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin. Rising to a height of above the Shropshire Plain, it is a prominent and well-known landmark, marking the entrance to...
, Shropshire and elsewhere in Britain, as well as at
SabrathaSabratha, Sabratah or Siburata , in the Az Zawiyah District in the northwestern corner of modern Libya, was the westernmost of the "three cities" of Tripolis. From 2001 to 2007 it was the capital of the former Sabratha Wa Surman District. It lies on the Mediterranean coast about 65km west of Tripoli...
, a Roman city in
LibyaLibya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa...
. As a member of the Council of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ), Kenyon was involved in the efforts to reopen the School after the hiatus of the Second World War. In January 1951 she travelled to the Transjordan and undertook excavations in the
West BankThe West Bank is a landlocked territory and is the eastern part of the Palestinian territories; on the west bank of the River Jordan in the Middle East. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel, which maintains the security of this area. To the east,...
at
JerichoJericho is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian Territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate, and has a population of over 20,000 Palestinians. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest...
(Tell es-Sultan) on behalf of the BSAJ. Her work at Jericho, from 1952 until 1958, made her world famous and established a lasting legacy in the archaeological methodology of the Levant. Ground-breaking discoveries concerning the Neolithic cultures of the Levant were made in this ancient settlement. In this period she also completed the publication of the excavations at Samaria. Her volume,
Samaria Sebaste III: The Objects, appeared in 1957. Having completed her excavations at Jericho in 1958, Kenyon excavated in
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
from 1961 to 1967, concentrating on the 'City of David' to the immediate south of the
Temple MountThe Temple Mount , also known as Mount Moriah and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary , is a religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem. Due to its importance for Judaism and Islam it is one of the most contested religious sites in the world.The Temple Mount contains the holiest site in Judaism...
.
Although Kenyon had no doubt the sites she excavated were linked to the Old Testament narrative she nevertheless drew attention to inconsistencies, concluding that Solomon's
"stables" at Megiddo were totally impractical for holding horses (1978:72), and that Jericho fell long before Joshua's arrival (1978:35). Consequently Kenyon's work has been cited to support the minimalist school of Palestinian archaeology that argues the pre-586 B.C.E. Old Testament historical account was either highly exaggerated or fantasy or occurred in south-west Arabia.
Kenyon's vast legacy in the field of excavation technique and ceramic methodology, not only in the Levant but also further afield, is attested to by Larry G. Herr, one of the directors of the Madaba Plains Project. He attributes to her directly the first of the key events (after the advances made by William F. Albright at Tell Beit Mirsim in the 1920s) that brought about our modern understanding of pottery in the southern Levant:
"The first event was the refinement of stratigraphic techniques that Kathleen Kenyon's dig at Jericho catalyzed. The strict separation of earth layers, or archaeological sediments, also allowed the strict separation of ceramic assemblages".
Herr detects Kenyon's powerful indirect influence in the second event that promoted advance within ceramic methodology, namely:
"...the importation of Kenyon's digging techniques by Larry Toombs and Joe Callaway to Ernest Wright's project at Balata. Here, they combined Wright's interest in ceramic typology in the best Albright tradition with Kenyon's methods of excavation, which allowed the isolation of clear, stratigraphically determined pottery assemblages".
Herr summarises the somewhat mixed nature of Kenyon's legacy: for all the positive advances, there were also shortcomings:
"Kenyon... did not capitilize fully on (the) implication of her stratigraphic techniques by producing final publications promptly. Indeed her method of digging, which most of us have subsequently adopted, causes a proliferation of loci that excavators often have difficulty keeping straight long enough to produce coherent published stratigraphic syntheses. Moreover, her insistence that excavation proceed in narrow trenches denies us, when we use the Jericho reports, the confidence that her loci, and the pottery assemblages that go with them, represent understandable human activity patterns over coherently connected living areas. The individual layers, insufficiently exposed horizontally, simply cannot be interpreted credibly in terms of function. This further makes publication difficult, both to produce and to use".
Another important aspect of Kathleen Kenyon's archaeological career was her role as a teacher. From 1948 to 1962 she lectured in Levantine Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Kenyon's teaching, complemented by her excavations at
JerichoJericho is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian Territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate, and has a population of over 20,000 Palestinians. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest...
and
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
(which successively formed her 'field school'), helped to train a generation of archaeologists, who went on themselves to teach in Britain, Australia, Canada, the United States, Denmark and elsewhere.
Awards and commemoration
The British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, amalgamated within the
Council for British Research in the LevantThe Council for British Research in the Levant was formed in 1998 with the amalgamation of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History and the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem...
(CBRL) in 1998, was officially renamed the Kenyon Institute on 10 July 2003 in honour of Kathleen Kenyon.
Published works
1942
The Buildings at Samaria, [Samaria-Sebaste I], London, 1942 (co-authored with Crowfoot, J.W. & Sukenik, E.L.)
1948
Excavations at the Jewry Wall Site, [Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 15], Leicester, London : Society of Antiquaries, 1948.
1949
Guide to Wroxeter Roman City, London, 1949.
1951 "Some Notes on the History of Jericho in the Second Millennium B.C.",
PEQ 83 (1951), 101-138.
1952
Beginning in Archaeology, London, 1952.
1952 "Early Jericho",
Antiquity 26 (1952), 116-122.
1953
Beginning in Archaeology, second edition, London, 1953.
1954
Guide to Ancient Jericho, Jerusalem, 1954.
1957
Digging Up Jericho, London, 1957. (also published in Dutch, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish and Swedish editions).
1957
The Objects from Samaria, [Samaria-Sebaste III], London, 1957 (co-authored with Crowfoot, J.W. & Crowfoot, G.M.
1958 "Some Notes on the Early and Middle Bronze Age Strata of Megiddo",
Eretz Israel 5 (1958), pp.51-60.
1959
Excavations at Southwark, [Research Papers of Surrey Archaeological Society 5], 1959.
1960
Archaeology in the Holy Land, first edition, London, 1960.
1960
Excavations at Jericho - Volume I Tombs Excavated in 1952-4, London 1960.
1961
Beginning in Archaeology, revised edition, London, 1961.
1965
Archaeology in the Holy Land, second edition, London, 1965.
1965
Excavations at Jericho - Volume II Tombs Excavated in 1955-8, London, 1965.
1965, "British Archaeology Abroad - Jerusalem",
Antiquity 39 (1965), 36-37.
1966
Amorites and Canaanites, (Schweich Lectures Series, 1963), London : Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1966.
1966 "Excavations in Jerusalem, 1965",
PEQ (1966), 73-88.
1967
Jerusalem - Excavating 3000 Years of History, [New Aspects of Antiquity], London, 1967 (also published in a German edition).
1969 "Middle and Late Bronze Age Strata at Megiddo",
Levant 1 (1969), pp.25-60.
1970
Archaeology in the Holy Land, third edition, 1970 (also published in Dutch, Danish, German, Spanish and Swedish editions).
1971
Royal Cities of the Old Testament, London, 1971.
1971 "An Essay on Archaeological Technique: the Publication of Results from the Excavation of a Tell",
Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971), 271-279.
1974
Digging up Jerusalem, London : Benn, 1974.
1974 "Tombs of the Intermediate Early Bronze - Middle Bronze Age at Tel 'Ajjul", in Stewart, J.R. (ed.),
Tell el Ajjul - the Middle Bronze Age Remains, [App. 2. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology], Göteborg, 1974, 76-85.
1978
The Bible and recent archaeology, London : British Museum Publications Ltd, 1978.
External links