Dame Kathleen Kenyon

Digging Up the Holy Land

Miriam C Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315430676
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Dame Kathleen Kenyon has always been a larger-than-life figure, likely the most influential woman archaeologist of the 20th century. In the first full-length biography of Kenyon, Miriam Davis recounts not only her many achievements in the field but also her personal side, known to very few of her contemporaries. Her public side is a catalog of major successes: discovering the oldest city at Jericho with its amazing collection of plastered skulls; untangling the archaeological complexities of ancient Jerusalem and identifying the original City of David; participating in the discipline's most famous all-woman excavation at Great Zimbabwe. Her development (with Sir Mortimer Wheeler) of stratigraphic trenching methods has been universally emulated by archaeologists for over half a century. Her private life—her childhood as daughter of the director of the British Museum, her accidental choice of a career in archaeology, her working at bombed sites in London during the blitz, and her solitary retirement to Wales—are generally unknown. Davis provides a balanced and illuminating picture of both the public Dame Kenyon and the private person.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• PREFACE
• PROLOGUE
• ONE In the Shadow of the British Museum
• TWO Beginning in Archaeology
• THREE From St. Albans to Samaria
• FOUR The Institute of Archaeology
• FIVE Walls of Jericho
• SIX “The Oldest Town in the World”
• SEVEN Searching for the City of David
• EIGHT Battling Over Jerusalem
• NINE St. Hughs and Rose Hill
• APPENDIX Works by Kathleen Kenyon
• ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTES
• REFERENCES
• INDEX
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR