Liberty University

Kathleen Kenyon

A research paper submitted to professor franklin castello
In Partial Fulfillment of the requirements For
BIBL – 471

Liberty University Online

By
Esther Lucas-Robinson

october 10, 2010

Esther Lucas-Robinson
BIBL – 471 – Biblical Archaeology
‘Kathleen Kenyon’

Introduction
Some of the more remarkable archaeological discoveries in the 20th century were made by Dame Kathleen Kenyon. Kathleen Kenyon was born into the heart of the English scholarly community and with all the help that influence and connections could provide became one of the foremost excavators in Great Britain. Even though Miss Kenyon was purported to be a Christian, she did not argue for the biblical account …show more content…

She was instrumental in contributing to the founding of the University of London’s Institute of Archaeology. Kenyon was a lecturer in Palestinian Archaeology and actively combined seminar and classroom instruction with actual work in the field. She conducted excavations at Sutton Walls in England and Sabratha in Libya and served as the first Secretary and as acting Director during these war years. She was associated with the Institute from 1935 to 1962. She also, in 1951, began serving as Honorary Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem.
The Jericho Excavation
In 1949 British Archaeologist John Garstang, who had earlier began excavations at Jericho, asked Kathleen to review his findings. Determining that Garstang’s work needed modification she began in 1951 to use the more refined version of excavation method which had been pioneered by Wheeler. This method now called “The Wheeler-Kenyon system” involves digging within a series of 5x5 meter squares set within a larger grid. This leaves a (1 meter wide) freestanding wall of earth known as a balk on each side of a unit. These vertical slices of earth allow archaeologists to compare the exact provenance of a found object or feature to adjacent layers of earth ("strata"). Kenyon’s method, which resembled a checkerboard with walls between the squares, revealed “layers of time” at the given site. This