the-epistolary: The badass female pioneers of...

The badass female pioneers of archaeology.

From left to right, top to bottom:

1. Gertrude Bell: was a writer, archaeologist, political officer, traveller and administrator, who helped shape British policy in the Middle East and the creation of the modern state of Iraq. She was described as “one of the few representatives of HIs Majesty’s Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection.”

2. Mary Leakey: developed a system of classifying the tools she and her husband excavated from the Olduvai Gorge. She was responsible for the discovery of the Proconsul skull, the Zinjanthropus skull and the Laetoli footprints.

3. Amelia Edwards: was a novelist, journalist, traveller and Egyptologist. Through her travel writings, she greatly increased public awareness of archaeology and the importance of conserving monuments threatened by tourism, looting and development.

4. Dorothy Garrod: was the first woman to hold an Oxbridge chair, the first female professor at Cambridge, and her work pioneered research in the field of palaeolithic studies. She contributed greatly to the understanding of prehistoric sequences of occupation in palestine.

5. Mary Anning: was a fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist, whose work radically changed scientific thinking about prehistoric life. She’s most remembered for discovering the Ichthyosaur.

6. Ruth Benedict: challenged the traditional views held by anthropologists and folklorists by shifting the focus away from culture-trait diffusion and towards theories of performance as central to understanding and interpreting culture. Her work emphasised a holistic view of culture, questioning relationships between different elements.

7. Gertrude Caton-Thompson: worked as an archaeologist in Egypt, and undertook the first archaeological survey of the northern Faiyum. She later undertook the first systematic excavation of Yemen, and excavated at Great Zimbabwe. She was also influential in helping Mary Leakey start her career.

8. Hilda Petrie: worked as a copyist under, and later became the wife of, Flinders Petrie. Hilda made herself invaluable as an excavator and archaeologist, her work taking her into cramped uncomfortable quarters. Petrie was so impressed with her skill, that she often was given excavations of her own.

9. Hetty Goldman: was the first woman professor at the School of Humanistic Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is well known for her excavations in Turkey and Boetia, and she sponsored the escape of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.