Kathleen Kenyon

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Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978), important English archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent and excavator of Jericho in Jordan from 1952 to 1958.

Her father, Sir Frederic Kenyon, was Director of the British Museum. Kathleen Kenyon was a graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, and was the first woman to become president of the Oxford Archaeological Society. Following her graduation in 1929, she worked with Gertrude Caton–Thompson on the excavation of Great Zimbabwe, and subsequently went to work for leading archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

Her work with Wheeler led to the development of the Wheeler-Kenyon system of archaeological excavation, a system that relies on measured units or squares to divide the excavation field.

Between 1936 and 1939 Kenyon excavated the Jewry Wall site in Leicester. At its foundation, on April 29, 1937, she became the first Director of the University of London Institute of Archaeology, holding the post until 1946. Later she worked on excavations at Sutton Walls, Sabratha, and other major sites, eventually becoming Honorary Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem.

Her work at Jericho helped date the occupation of the mound Natufian Culture at the end of the last Ice Age (10,000 – 9,000 BC). She also excavated in Jerusalem (the City of David), with relatively little success. In 1962, she became principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford.

On her retirement in 1973, she was appointed a DBE.