Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging up the Holy Land Miriam C. Davis Dame Kathleen Kenyon has always been a larger-than-life figure, the most influential woman archaeologist of the 20th century. In the first full-length biography of Kenyon, Miriam Davis recounts not only her many achievements in the field but also her personal side known to very few of her contemporaries. Her public persona is a catalog of major successes: • discovering the world's oldest city at Jericho with its amazing collection of plastered skulls. • identifying the original City of David in the archaeological complexity of Jerusalem. • participating in the discipline’s most famous all-woman excavation at Great Zimbabwe. • Developing stratigraphic trenching methods universally emulated by archaeologists for over half a century. Conversely, her private life - as daughter of the director of the British Museum, her accidental choice of a career in archaeology, work during the London blitz, and solitary retirement to Wales - is generally unknown. Davis provides a balanced and illuminating picture of both the public Dame Kenyon and the private person. Miriam C. Davis is Associate Professor of History at Delta State University in Mississippi.