Pillars of Jerusalem Archaeology

Although we owe our present knowledge of the City of David to many scholars, Kathleen Kenyon and Yigal Shiloh stand out as giants. Kenyon brought Jerusalem archaeology into the modern era, while Shiloh later applied newer Israeli methods to the difficult conditions under which archaeologists in Jerusalem must work.

Before her excavations in Jerusalem, Kathleen Kenyon pioneered the use of the stragraphic method in what was then Palestine. Born in London in 1906, she graduated from Oxford with a degree in history in 1929 and soon began taking part in excavations, first at the ruins of Great Zimbabwe in Africa and then the Roman-British site of Verulamium (St. Albans). At St. Albans, during the summers of 1930–1936, she learned the basics of the stratigraphic method, which had been developing since early in the century. During those years, Kenyon also spent three spring seasons excavating at Samaria. It was there that she introduced the techniques she had learned at St. Albans to the archaeology of Palestine.