Amanda Adams (23 page)

What they encountered was a new and fairly unprecedented ingredient in the field of archaeology: modern development. Construction projects pose a serious threat to archaeological sites—a blast of dynamite here or grading bulldozer there can erase evidence of thousands of years of human history in a moment’s time. Whereas once the biggest hurdle to accessing an archaeological site was distance (permissions were also tricky), now the graver concern was how much
time
do we have before the site is gone? Today, the rescue of sites slated for destruction is called salvage archaeology. Archaeologists excavate what they can and do their best to understand the cities and structures of yesterday before tomorrow’s skyscrapers and highways take their place.

For Garrod and her two collaborators, in addition to sandstorms and lice; there were now ear-splitting drills, construction dust, and relentless hammers banging metal all day. The women worked for seven weeks straight in an environment of deafening jackhammers. Wet tents and snakes would have been preferable. Some of the site’s strata, or the soil layers, were also as hard as cement. No shovel stood a chance. Garrod decided that the only way to truly assess what the prehistoric site contained was to cut out blocks of the cement-like earth called breccia with high-power drills and send them to the National Museum in Beirut for analysis. At least it would be quiet there.

DOROTHY
GARROD
IS
a little like a calmer and more introverted Gertrude Bell. The ferocity of their intellect and the intensity, the sheer volume of their life’s achievements unites them. Both women had lost men important to them and subsequently threw themselves unconditionally into their work. Both had exceptionally close relationships to their fathers. Bell was the first woman to take a First in history at Oxford, thereby changing the academic terrain for other women and proving that ideas about a woman’s supposed intellectual inferiority were nonsense, and Garrod ratcheted the ladder even higher. In
1939
she became Disney (nothing to do with Walt) Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. It was an electrifying event, and female students at all English universities were overjoyed by the news.

Her application for the position at Cambridge began, “I beg to submit myself as a candidate.” She didn’t think she would get it. There were very few women in teaching positions at the university in
1939
, and Dorothy’s application was in competition with those of a large number of accomplished male scholars. Full membership for women in the university system still had not been granted, and archaeology—especially prehistory—was seen as manly territory. Women might make headway in literature and poetry, but in the field?

It was precisely Garrod’s unmatched excellence in the field that brought her victory. No other applicant had her credentials for original site discoveries. Many of her competitors were “armchair archaeologists” whose greatest contributions to archaeology were born from library books and pipe smoke. When she was elected professor, women scholars and students throughout Europe were elated. The Garrod tradition of scientific achievement continued, and a woman now held one of the most respected and esteemed positions in science. Although she shied away from all the publicity that descended upon her (actually devoured her), Garrod had done what she set out to do. She had proven herself the worth of a man, of even three men, and of all the male archaeologists who had come before her and who worked beside her. Right after the announcement of her professorship, Garrod confided to her friend Gertrude, “I wish my father had been alive, and the others.” Her father had died recently. The men in her life—father, brothers, fiancé—must have cheered from on high. Courage and perseverance had brought her to her goal.

Here she is at age fifty, a portrait that captures the newly appointed professor’s physical presence:

Although 50 years old, her upright, well-knit figure, moving quietly and unselfconsciously, gave an impression of controlled energy of mind and body. . . She appeared taller than her 5 ft. 2 in., with noticeably small, delicate, but strong hands which seldom fumbled. Her steady eyes were dark brown and when greeting people flickered momentarily; the lids seemed to curtsey. Her thick crisply waving dark hair was worn short. The pleasant quiet voice, pitched rather low, had a tendency to drop at the end of a sentence. Her movements were unhurried but not slow, and even under pressure she imparted an air of repose. This paradox of tranquility combined with a life of sustained energy, was a characteristic rarely met with to such a degree.
³⁰

Garrod had worked through the complications of field life and had always loved teaching small groups and classes, yet within the ivory tower she hit her biggest challenge yet. Simply becoming one of the first women professors did not eradicate centuries of discrimination. From out of the wide-open field and into the windowless meeting rooms of Cambridge, she felt stifled and clipped. Her associates proved to be cagey and self-aggrandizing.

The faculty committees and boards were mired in hierarchy and personality conflicts. Her task as Disney Professor was to help reorganize the archaeology department and enhance its studies in prehistory. Although she enjoyed this aspect of her work, the rigmarole of university life and policy sucked her dry. Even her lectures suffered. Naturally reserved, she delivered lectures that were notoriously tedious and dull. One student complained of presentations with “never a light or bright moment.”
³¹
University life was oppressive to Garrod. She stayed on as faculty until
1954
, continuing her fieldwork and research when possible, but at age sixty she retired, happily, and like some bird that had once been caged, she bolted, wings spread, toward her “years of fulfillment” back in the field.

She began work on the coasts of Lebanon and Syria, which contained earthy ribbons of evidence showing late Pleistocene sea levels, and began a search for ancient shorelines. In determining the contours of the former Ice Age sea, she could locate inland sites that had once been coastal. These were the ideal spots where a person would want to make camp: caves with ocean views (and good fishing) surrounded by land where plants could be gathered and animals caught. Garrod also had a new tool up her sleeve.

With the advent of radiocarbon dating, she could obtain certain dates for some of the artifacts she uncovered. Her chronologies of the Paleolithic period in Palestine and Lebanon grew more robust, more comprehensive, more invaluable to archaeological understandings of how humans became human.

THE SOCIETY OF
Antiquaries of London was founded in
1707
, and its Royal Charter (the same today as it was then) is to enable “the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries.” For its first two hundred years of operation, women were denied any role in the society. Even those who had advanced archaeological knowledge in England and abroad were ignored. In
1968
that pattern was reversed when the society awarded Dorothy Garrod its grand Gold Medal. She was seventy-six years old. In her acceptance speech Garrod made a point of mentioning the historical absence of women within the society; she issued a soft reprimand. She also proclaimed to the society fellows a new truth—one directed specifically at the society but applicable to the entire field of archaeology. She summarized the unstoppable arrival of women to a field once denied them by remarking that, at last, here was “the long-awaited and by some, long-dreaded day, when the gates of the citadel were finally opened to the Amazons.”
³²

Garrod had secured entry into the field of archaeology to a degree no woman before her had. As she tore down those gates, a rush of other women followed. Some ran alongside her. It was in the post–World War
I
climate that several women gained a stronger foothold in the sciences they loved. Garrod just happened to be, perhaps, the most outstanding and certainly one of the most trenchant figures.

Why Garrod chose archaeology as her life’s passion is a question that harks back to her younger days when she lost her three brothers, and perhaps her future husband, and thereon decided to make her life a worthy thing. To decide on a scientific field was almost a foregone conclusion, but archaeology veered significantly from medicine or zoology. Could Garrod have found some attraction in selecting the “ultra-masculine” scientific field
least
accessible to her, one that required her to forsake the daily comforts of a clean desk and clothes for work more physically rigorous and demanding? She may have felt that archaeology offered her more room to prove something, to venture into territory where history was not just the subject studied but something she could harness herself, change the direction of. By breaking into the field as a woman, she could
make
history.

Garrod’s passion for prehistory and human origins also ties into broader themes about why archaeology is such a persistent love, a source of captivation, even today. People never lose interest in learning about lost treasures or hearing a good piece of evidence concerning our peculiarly smart species: making the first fire, writing with reeds, burying kings with enough soldiers and wealth to survive the afterlife.

In a world (a Western world) where creation stories are scoffed at as fanciful, where science has replaced magic, and where spirituality has been given a run for its money by individualism and consumerism, archaeology is the rare endeavor that emphasizes objectivity but also calls for emotion and touches excitable hearts. People don’t like things sugar-coated as much as they do science-coated, and archaeology offers up the greatest stories about human origins, intrigue, and drama with a nice big pinch of truth. These are the facts, the archaeologists assure us. Garrod’s attraction to archaeology was probably much like people’s today: here was a way to dig up some great stories to share, methodically, carefully, and have a rather fun time doing it.

EPILOGUE

EXCAVATIONS

C
amels, deserts, archaeology, solitude,
and women’s lives lived fearlessly: a romantic combination that appeals to us folk bound to laptops, an apartment lease or mortgage, and routine. The pioneering women archaeologists experienced a brand of adventure that evokes dreamy wanderlust and longing for the time when a woman could gallop across deserts on a horse wearing impractical but fetching clothes, a knife strapped to her leg beneath her petticoat, a bag full of ammunition and letters, no return ticket, tea and conversation in tents. These women seemed so free in a way we no longer are, tethered as we are to email and cell phones and appointment books. Nor can we truly escape from our own Western culture, as Coke cans, fast food, and neon lights greet us upon arrival in most corners of the world. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, to go away was really and truly to be gone.

After exploring the lives of each of the seven women in this book, I realized that except for Dorothy Garrod, none of them were young women when they embarked on their archaeological travels, only to return to the equivalent of settled suburban life after a fleeting moment in a faraway place. Nor did they build enviable careers by age thirty. On the contrary, their professional and personal achievements were a slow burn.

While most of the ladies chronicled here had at least an interest in archaeology and history when they were young, archaeology often sneaked into their lives in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Amelia Edwards found her passion for Egyptology by chance on the Nile. She was thirty years old when she set out looking for life’s new path, though. Advancing archaeological work in Egypt was not something she had in mind. To do so, she compromised a lucrative career as a novelist to start learning hieroglyphics in her late thirties, mastered it, and became a middle-aged Egyptologist.

Zelia Nuttall had loved Mexican archaeology since reading picture books made of ancient symbols and codes as a child before bedtime, but she did not venture out into the archaeological field itself until age
fifty-three.
Accustomed to life in a big fancy house with servants and distinguished guests to entertain, she was downright excited about camping in an abandoned quarantine station for weeks on a deserted island so she could dig. You never do know when life’s best adventure will present itself.

Jane Dieulafoy’s career in archaeology was handmaiden to her marriage. Had she married a different man, Susa might never have been their shared dream. Still actively excavating in Morocco just before she succumbed to fever at age sixty-five, Dieulafoy followed her passion for archaeology all the way to death’s door, and her taste for rigorous fieldwork only deepened as she aged. She and Marcel excavated and went on arduous journeys their whole lives. It was a rare form of sustainable adventure.