Kathleen Kenyon 1906-1978
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Generally recognized as the world’s greatest field archaeologist and clearly Great Britain’s leading Biblical archaeologist, Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon is dead at 72.
Dame Kathleen died in August, less than a week after suffering a stroke. She was stricken at her home in Wrexham, North Wales.
Dame Kathleen’s name will always be associated with the so-called Wheeler-Kenyon method—which, in its numerous variants, is used by virtually all Near Eastern archaeologists digging today. This excavation method, which she developed with Sir Mortimer Wheeler at Roman sites in Britain, consists of laying out five-meter squares over the area to be excavated, and leaving balks or catwalks between the squares, thus forming a grid. The five-meter squares are excavated but the balks are not—at least initially, for they form a record of the various strata which formerly lay within the excavated squares. As developed and applied by Dame Kathleen, this method requires slow, careful excavation, detailed field records of all finds, and frequent drawing of stratigraphic sections. The latter are often referred to as section drawings; they record the various levels revealed in the balks. Only in this way, Dame Kathleen contended, could finds be securely dated.
Dame Kathleen is best known for her excavations at Jericho and Jerusalem. She excavated at Jericho from 1952 to 1958. Her Jerusalem excavations extended from 1961 to 1967 and centered on the oldest inhabited part of Jerusalem, the City of David. She uncovered spectacular finds at both sites: at Jericho she discovered a city with a monumental tower dating to about 7000 B.C.; at Jerusalem she discovered part of the wall that surrounded the city when David captured it from the Jebusites.
Her Jericho excavations have raised problems for Biblical historians: she found no city there during the Late Bronze Age, the period when Joshua is thought to have lived. Had the Late Bronze Age City eroded away, as some scholars think, or was Joshua’s conquest of Jericho, for some reason or other and in some detail or other, inaccurately related in the Bible? Dame Kathleen rejected the view that the Late Bronze Age city had eroded away.
Dame Kathleen was an outspoken woman who made no secret of her sympathy for the Arab cause and her belief in the injustice of Israel’s case vis-a-vis the Palestinian refugees. She was often critical of Israeli archaeologists in general, and of Professor Benjamin Mazar in particular. (Professor Mazar directs the major excavation at the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. “He just does not know what stratigraphy is,” she once remarked, speaking of Professor Mazar. Mazar, on the other hand, claims that he pays particular attention to stratigraphy.)
As a result of an article in BAR which questioned whether her anti-Zionist politics affected her work (see “Kathleen Kenyon’s Anti-Zionist Politics—Does It Affect Her Work?” BAR 05201:03). Dame Kathleen was not sympathetic to BAR and frequently criticized its editor (see
In addition to two popular books on Jerusalem, Digging Up Jerusalem and Jerusalem, Excavating 3000 Years of History, and a popular book on Jericho, Digging Up Jericho, Dame Kathleen wrote a number of other books, including Royal Cities of The Old Testament, Beginning in Archaeology, and Archeology in the Holy Land. The last is now in its third edition.
Dame Kathleen’s death adds another illustrious name to the list of world-famous Biblical archaeologists who have died in this decade: Nelson Glueck (America) (“Nelson Glueck & King Solomon—A Romance That Ended,” BAR 01:01), William Foxwell Albright (America) (“A Life of Albright,” BAR 02:02), G. Ernest Wright (America) (“G. Ernest Wright Dies,” BAR 01:01), Roland de Vaux (France) (“Père de Vaux and the Old Testament,” BAR 03:02) and Yohanan Aharoni (Israel) (“Yohanan Aharoni—The Man and His Work,” 02:04).
Dame Kathleen’s death raises a serious problem which the archaeological profession has yet to resolve: what happens when an archaeologist dies before completing the final excavation report?
At her death Dame Kathleen had not published a single volume of the final report of her work on the tell at Jericho or her excavation at various sites in Jerusalem. (BAR hopes to address problems relating to scientific publication of excavation results in the near future.) In her most recent work, Dame Kathleen wrote:
“I should have had a gap of, say, seven years instead of three between Jericho and Jerusalem. As it is, I am still (1972) finishing off Jericho before starting on the Jerusalem finds. In an ideal situation, one would have innumerable stooges (or one could upgrade them to Research Assistants), but British archaeology does not provide the finance. Therefore Jerusalem must wait until I have finished Jericho.”
(Digging Up Jerusalem, p. 191)
Let us hope that some way will be found to complete the final publication of both Jericho and Jerusalem. This should be a major concern and obligation of Biblical archaeology in Great Britain. Clearly publication of these final reports will be a far more difficult task without the dedication, devotion and keen, dispassionate intelligence of Kathleen Kenyon.
Generally recognized as the world’s greatest field archaeologist and clearly Great Britain’s leading Biblical archaeologist, Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon is dead at 72.
Dame Kathleen died in August, less than a week after suffering a stroke. She was stricken at her home in Wrexham, North Wales.
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