Dame Kathleen Kenyon
Digging up the Holy Land, by Miriam C. Davis
Left Coast Press, 280 pages, $24.95 (paperback)
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She never married, and her friends described her as a person whose world consisted of three loves: archaeology, dogs and gin. Kathleen Kenyon was also the head of a women's college at Oxford. She bombarded the press with anti-Zionist and anti-Israel articles and letters − she thought that the Muslims had preferential rights to the Land of Israel because they had been living there for 1,400 years, whereas the Jews had ruled the land only during the First Temple period (about 400 years) and for another 100 years, during the Hasmonean dynasty. She was, however, one of the most important archaeologists ever to dig in the Land of Israel.
That is not a negligible achievement, because more archaeological work has been done in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, in other words in the State of Israel and the territories, than anywhere else in the world. There is no other country that has been so thoroughly researched, and the number of digs and surveys carried out here is incomparably greater than what has been done in far larger countries. Kenyon is not only one of the most important archaeologists to have worked here (and they number over 1,000), she is also the leading female archaeologist to have worked anywhere (along with the prehistorian Dorothy Garrod).
Kenyon ?(1906-1978?) was educated and well-to-do. Her father was the director of the British Museum, a classicist and a Bible scholar. Like him, she wanted to research the past, but she preferred working in the field to studying ancient manuscripts and books.
Miriam Davis' book describes how Kenyon began her career as an assistant at the Great Zimbabwe excavations, in what was at the time the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. It is interesting to note that in the early 20th century, when racism was not yet politically incorrect, many scholars openly suggested that the site, which contains magnificent and extraordinarily large ritual, government and commercial structures, could not have been built by Africans. It was hard for them to believe that black people were capable of such achievements.
The second dig in which Kenyon participated was in Verulamium, today the city of St. Albans, north of London. Here she acquired the theoretical principles that typified her modus operandi and came to be named after her and her mentor at the dig, Mortimer Wheeler. The Wheeler-Kenyon method involves digging five-meter-deep pits, which exposes several archaeological strata at once.
Kenyon worked primarily in the Land of Israel, at three very important sites - Samaria, Jericho and Jerusalem - but she was active on three continents and on many sites that the book barely mentions. Between 1930 and 1935, for example, she divided her time between Mandatory Palestine and excavations in England. Her amazing energy enabled her to accomplish an almost unparalleled amount of work.
The first dig in Palestine in which Kenyon participated was in Samaria, the capital of the first-millennium B.C.E. kingdom of Israel. The group that made up her team, included British and American archaeologists and two representatives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Eliezer Lipa Sukenik and Nahman Avigad. An American delegation had excavated the same area between 1908 and 1910 and produced excellent results, discovering the remains of a royal palace and its ivories, as well as ostraka ?(potsherds with inscriptions) from the days of the monarchy. Digging here in 1931-34, the team also revealed interesting findings. Kenyon's primary contribution was her improvement of the methodology used to distinguish between the strata, distinctions that archaeologists call "stratigraphics."
Kenyon's next dig in Palestine was in Jericho, this time as the director of the delegation. Jericho is one of the most desirable sites in the country, partly because many archaeologists hoped to establish the veracity of the story of the land's conquest by Joshua. The first excavation in Tel Jericho was carried out in 1867 by Charles Warren, but he abandoned work at the site because he did not yet know how to excavate a tel. Only in 1890 did British archaeologist Sir William Matthew Petrie develop a method for excavating an archaeological site of this type.
Petrie was the first one to understand that a tel is an accumulation of vestiges of settlements that have piled up atop one another, and that the archaeologist must distinguish among the various strata, each one of which represents another period. Petrie also understood that the various strata can be dated by way of potsherds, which generally preserve well: They do not dissolve in water, and fire is likely only to strengthen them. Petrie's distinctions between periods, which today seem very simple to us, were an innovation in their time.
Jericho was excavated once again by a German-Austrian delegation (1907-1909) and by a delegation of the British Mandate (1930-1936). These digs were carried out using methods that today seem backward, and even if they taught us quite a lot, they did not solve the question of the conquest of the country.
Kenyon began her excavations in Jericho in 1952, and planned to work there for two years, but her finds justifiably prolonged her work, and her dig went on for seven seasons, until 1958. The delegation registered many achievements, but two were especially prominent: It emerged that during the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 B.C.E.?), the era when the city was, according to tradition, conquered by Joshua, there was in fact no settlement in Jericho. Thus Jericho joins other cities mentioned in the biblical account of the conquest that archaeological digs show were not actually settled during that period. Other examples include Ai (near Beit El); Arad, west of the Jordan River; and Heshbon, to the east of it.
Today most scholars believe that the narrative of the land's conquest by Joshua is a late and invented story, and that the settlement of the Israelites was a peaceful process. This should ease the concerns of those who believe that the land was taken by force, through bloodshed.
Kenyon's excavations in the remains of the much earlier Neolithic period (New Stone Age, from about 9500 B.C.E. to 6400 B.C.E.) turned up two strata of people who had not yet learned to make pottery vessels, and two other strata of inhabitants who had already learned the art of pottery.
Kenyon's theories, which later were confirmed in the excavations by her colleagues at other sites as well, established our knowledge about the transition from the Stone Ages to the historical periods (after writing came into use). The permanent spring of Jericho, which is so rare in this country, was the reason that settlements existed there almost without interruption, and resulted in a tel that is 24 meters high.
Slim pickings
The final site excavated by Kenyon was Jerusalem, and here she was not so lucky. In effect, the digs there, as they are described in the book, were post-climactic. Despite the huge investment - seven digging seasons between 1961 and 1967 - with up to six sites operating simultaneously, employing hundreds of workers, the results were small in number and also unimportant. One reason for this is that while Jordan was still in charge of the old city, Kenyon was not permitted to work in the areas where other archaeologists - like Benjamin Mazar, who excavated south and southeast of the Temple Mount, and Nahman Avigad, who worked in the Jewish Quarter - later discovered many important finds. (Kenyon's work was restricted because the Waqf Muslim religious trust was opposed to excavations in the Jewish Quarter, since there were Palestinian refugees living there).
The second reason is related to the limitations of her modus operandi, the Wheeler-Kenyon method, which relied on examinations in a limited zone and refrained from exposing a horizontal area. Careful examinations in pits, as meticulous as they may be, are likely to lead to a result similar to that of the Indian fable about the three blind men who fell on an elephant but were unable to identify it correctly: The person who fell on the tail shouted "ropes," the one who encountered the legs declared "planks," and the third, who climbed on the tusks, yelled "swords." Only a dig that exposes a horizontal area is likely to take in the whole "elephant."
In Jerusalem, Kenyon's delegation failed several times to understand its findings. For example, in her digs in the Armenian Garden, south of Jaffa Gate, the delegation did not notice that this was the site both of Herod's palace and the palace of the Crusader kings of Jerusalem.
The figure of Kenyon as portrayed in the book is a model of diligence and dedication. The book is based on thorough research, including written and oral testimony. It is well-written and the story is appealing. In my opinion it deserves high praise.
Prof. Magen Broshi is an archaeologist and historian, and the former curator of the Shrine of the Book, at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
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