Kathleen Mary Kenyon was born in London on January 5, 1906. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Frederic Kenyon, who was director of the British Museum. She became first interested in archaeology during her attendance at Somerville College, Oxford, where she became the first female president of the Oxford Archaeological Society. After her graduation in 1929 she attended her first excavation in the ruins of Zimbabwe in Rhodesia, which was directed bye Gertrude Caton-Thomson.(Callaway, 1978/ Meyers, 1997)
When Kenyon returned from her excavation in Zimbabwe, she became a member of staff to Sir Mortimer Wheeler. She accompanied him and his wife Tessa to a major excavation in the Romano-British city of Verulamium (north of London). It was her that Kenyon learned about Wheeler's method of stratigraphic excavation. Wheelers method involved excavating by trenches and requires careful observations, interpretation, and recording through out the excavation.(Callaway, 1978/ Meyers, 1997) "When the vertical faces of the trenches and of balks running up to them are recorded and drawn to scale, it is possible to plot, in three dimensions, the stratigraphic positions and relationships of all structures and finds, and to assign relative dates to them."(Meyers, 1997) Kenyon first introduced this method to the near east during her work with John Crowfoot at Samaria (1931-1933). But as she found out, she could not integrate the method successfully with a large operation. (Meyers, 1997)
During the war time (World war 2), Kenyons work was confined to England, but this doesn't mean she slowed her pace any. It was during this time that she contributed to the founding of the University of London Institute of Archaeology. She was the Institutes first Secretary and she also served as the institutes acting Director during the war years.(Callaway, 1978)
"From 1949 until 1962 Kenyon was lecturer in Palestinian Archaeology at the Institute, and it was during this period that she made her greatest contribution as teacher, complementing seminar and classroom instruction with actual work in the field at Sutton Walls in England, at Sabratha in Italy, and especially at Jericho and Jerusalem in Jordan."(Callaway, 1978) Then in 1951 Kenyon became an honorary director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Following this Kenyon started excavating Jericho, where important discoveries were twenty years earlier bye John Garstang.( Meyers, 1997) Jericho then became the Type-site for the application of the Wheeler-Kenyon method in Palestine. "She was able to establish for the first time a historic framework for the city over its 3,800 years of existance."(Meyers, 1997)
Kenyons chose Jerusalem as the final site to be excavated. However the site didn't attract as much public attention as Jericho had. Another factor that didn't help the sites popularity much was the Six-Day war in 1967, where excavations were put to a stop. But this was only a minor reason as to why Jerusalem had such a low profile, the more simple explaination was perhaps because the site was a poor one.(Callaway, 1978/ Meyers, 1997) "Consequently, Jerusalem was somewhat anticlimactic in Kenyon's career, never wuite providing the kind of grand finale that she deserved."(Callaway, 1978/ Meyers, 1997)
In 1962 Kenyon became principle of St. Hugh's College, Oxford, and she finally retired in 1973. Because of her retirement she was able to concentrate on publicising her work for Jericho and Jerusalem. Only two Volumes of her Excavations at Jericho were released before she died. She left behind a lot of completed works, which were edited and published later on, but she also died with some excavations still in her head. She contributed to many works (listed below), but the information and insight to her last few digs is lost forever.(Callaway, 1978/ Meyers, 1997)
"Her accomplishments led to many academic and international honors but the appreciation of her own country was marked most vividly by the DBE (Dame of the Order of the British Empire) conferred on her by Queen Elizabeth II in 1973."( Meyers, 1997)
Books and Contributions to works by Kenyon
The Buildings of Samaria (1942) Excavations at Jericho. Vol. I, II (1960, 1965) Archaeology in the Holy Land (from her series of lectures) Beginnings in Archaeology (1961) Digging up Jericho (1957) Digging up Jerusalem (1974) Jerusalem- Excavating 3000 years of History (1967) Amorites and Canaanites (1966) The Bible and Recent Archaeology (1978)
