Kathleen Kenyon

Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, DBE, FBA, FSA (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978) was a British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. 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. She was Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1962 to 1973, having undertaken her own studies at Somerville College, Oxford.

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, 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 in hockey and became the first female president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society. She graduated in 1928 with a third class degree and began a career in archaeology the following year.

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 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. 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 archaeologist 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.

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 late Hellenistic and early Roman eastern terra sigilata wares. In 1957, Kenyon introduced categories A, B, C, to classify eastern sigillata but without determining the exact place of manufacture. In 1934, Kenyon was closely associated with the Wheelers in the foundation of the Institute of Archaeology of University College London.

In the years leading up to the Second World War work in the Middle East became increasingly difficult, so, from 1936 to 1939, she carried out important excavations at the Jewry Wall in Leicester. The excavations were published in February 1937 in the Illustrated London News with pioneering reconstruction drawings by the artist Alan Sorrell whom she had happened to notice sketching her dig. Kenyon initially thought the overall Jewry Wall site was that of the town forum. Although she modified her views when she uncovered the remains of the baths, she continued to believe that the area had originally been laid out as the forum, with the Jewry Wall the west wall of the basilica, but argued that in a second phase of building the site had been converted to public baths. In a series of excavations undertaken between 1961 and 1972, the true remains of the forum were identified further east. The Jewry Wall was then identified as the wall of the palaestra (gymnasium) of the baths complex.