Kathleen Kenyon

Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978) was a British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent.

Kathleen Kenyon was born in London, England, in 1906.

She was the eldest daughter of Sir Frederic Kenyon, biblical scholar and later director of the British Museum.

Her grandfather was lawyer and Fellow of All Souls College, John Robert Kenyon, and her great-great-grandfather was the politician and lawyer Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon.

She grew up in Bloomsbury, London, in a house attached to the British Museum, with her mother, Amy Kenyon, and sister Nora Kenyon.

Known for being hard-headed and stubborn, Kathleen grew up as a tomboy, fishing, climbing trees and playing a variety of sports.

Determined that she and her sister should be well educated, Kathleen's father encouraged wide reading and independent study.

In later years Kenyon would remark that her father's position at the British Museum was particularly helpful for her education.

Kathleen was an excellent student, winning awards at school and particularly excelling in history.

She studied first at St Paul's Girls' School, where she was Head Girl, before winning an Exhibition to read history at Somerville College, Oxford.

While at Oxford, Kenyon won a Blue for her college in hockey and became the first female president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society.

She graduated in 1929 and began a career in archaeology.

After graduation Kenyon's first field experience was as a photographer for the pioneering excavations at Great Zimbabwe in 1929, led by Gertrude Caton Thompson.

Returning to England, Kenyon joined the archaeological couple Tessa Wheeler and her husband Mortimer Wheeler on their excavation of the Romano-British settlement of Verulamium (St Albans), 20 miles North of London.

Working there each summer between 1930 and 1935, Kenyon learned from Mortimer Wheeler the discipline of meticulously controlled and recorded stratigraphic excavation.

Wheeler entrusted her with the direction of the excavation of the Roman theatre.

In the years 1931 to 1934, Kenyon worked simultaneously at Samaria, then under the administration of the British Mandate for 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 London.

From 1936 to 1939, she carried out important excavations at the Jewry Wall in the city of Leicester.

These were published in the Illustrated London News 1937 with pioneering reconstruction drawings by the artist Alan Sorrell whom she had happened to notice sketching her dig.

In the years leading up to the Second World War work in the Middle East became increasingly difficult, so she excavated in Leicester, on the site of the Roman bath complex.

Although she was reluctant to abandon the view that she was uncovering a Roman Forum.

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 Archaeology of the University of London.

After the war, she excavated in Southwark, at The Wrekin, Shropshire and elsewhere in Britain, as well as at Sabratha, a Roman city in Libya.

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.

Although working on several important sites across Europe, it was her excavations in Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) in the 1950s that established her as one of the foremost archaeologists in the field.

In January 1951 she travelled to the Transjordan and undertook excavations in the West Bank at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) on behalf of the BSAJ.

The initial findings were first viewed by the public in the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain 1951 with a reconstruction drawing by Alan Sorrell.

She led excavations of Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, from 1952 to 1958, and has been called one of the most influential archaeologists of the 20th century.

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.

Her excavation of the Early Bronze Age walled city and the external cemeteries of the end of the Early Bronze Age, together with her analysis of the stratified pottery of these periods established her as the leading authority on that period.

She was Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1962 to 1973, having undertaken her own studies at Somerville College, Oxford.

In 1962, Kenyon was made Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford.

She retired in 1973 to Erbistock and was appointed a DBE.

Kenyon never married.

From 1974, Kenyon was the Honorary Vice President of the Chester Archaeological Society.

A career in archaeology was first suggested to Kathleen by Margery Fry, librarian at Somerville College.