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Society of Antiquaries, of which he was secretary from 1940–1950.
See also
Britain, Prehistoric Archaeology
Kent’s Cavern, a limestone cave on the Devonshire coast near Torbay, England, was first excavated in a systematic and serious way by John MacEnery, a local Catholic priest, in 1825, 1826, and 1829. MacEnery found what he considered to be clear evidence of the bones of extinct animals and ancient stone tools in the same strata. Geologist william buckland persuaded MacEnery that this could not be the case, and the publication of his memoir on the site had to wait until 1859, eighteen years after his death.
The site was excavated twice before 1859, in 1841 by R.A.C. Austen and in 1846 by william pengelly, who was later to gain fame as the excavator of brixham cave. Both excavators were persuaded of the association that Buckland had so strongly opposed. After the recognition of high(greater or longer) human antiquity, the British Association for the Advancement of Science funded Pengelly’s return to Kent’s Cavern between 1865 and 1878.
References
Van Riper, A. Bowdoin. 1993. Men among Mammoths:Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human Prehistory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
(1906–1978)
Kathleen Kenyon
(Image Select)
Kathleen Mary Kenyon, the eldest daughter of Sir Frederic Kenyon, was born on 5 January 1906 in England and died at the age of seventy-two on 24 August 1978 at her place of retirement in South Wales. Her father was keeper of manuscripts at the british museum. She attended St. Paul’s Girls’ School in London and her studies were so successful there that she became “head girl.” She then studied at Somerville College, Oxford University, and received her degree in history in 1929. As she had already decided to make archaeology her career, she seized the opportunity she was offered upon graduation from college to become a photographer and excavator with gertrude caton-thompson on a British Association expedition to great zimbabwe in southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe).
Between 1930 and 1935, Kenyon continued her training and fieldwork with the legendary sir mortimer wheeler at the Roman town of Verulamium near St. Albans, England. Her important contribution was the uncovering of the Roman theater there, the only public monument of its kind in the British Isles.
Kenyon spent the summer months from 1931 to 1934 on her first Near Eastern archaeological project. She worked on the Palestine Exploration Fund’s Crowfoot expedition to Samaria. She applied and refined her Romano-British field-training techniques to her excavations at Samaria, which made her a pioneer along with sir william matthew flinders petrie, george a. reisner, and Clarence Fisher in the introduction of methods of stratigraphical digging to archaeological excavations, with drawn sections, at ancient Near Eastern sites.
In 1935, Kenyon helped Wheeler establish the Institute of Archaeology at London University.
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