Dame Kathleen Kenyon
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Dame Kathleen Kenyon has always been a larger-than-life figure, likely the most influential woman archaeologist of the 20th century. In the first full-length biography of Kenyon, Miriam Davis recounts not only her many achievements in the field but also her personal side, known to very few of her contemporaries. Her public side is a catalog of major successes: discovering the oldest city at Jericho with its amazing collection of plastered skulls; untangling the archaeological complexities of ancient Jerusalem and identifying the original City of David; participating in the discipline’s most famous all-woman excavation at Great Zimbabwe. Her development (with Sir Mortimer Wheeler) of stratigraphic trenching methods has been universally emulated by archaeologists for over half a century. Her private life—her childhood as daughter of the director of the British Museum, her accidental choice of a career in archaeology, her working at bombed sites in London during the blitz, and her solitary retirement to Wales—are generally unknown. Davis provides a balanced and illuminating picture of both the public Dame Kenyon and the private person.
Miriam C. Davis first worked on an archaeological dig at the age of seventeen. She first visited the Middle East at the age of sixteen. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Emory University with a degree in history, she spent a year in Scotland at the University of St. Andrews on a Bobby Jones Scholarship, studying history and archaeology. After receiving an M.A. in history from the University of California at Santa Barbara, she spent a year at the University of York (England) as a Fulbright fellow, taking an M.A. in medieval archaeology. She then received a Ph.D. in medieval history from UCSB in 1995. Her scholarly work has concentrated on waste disposal and city cleaning in late medieval English towns, but she has also written for the popular press on archaeology and travel. Since 1995 she has taught at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Dr. Davis has participated in archaeological excavations in Alabama, Mississippi, England, and Scotland.