Spadework In Archaeology

de Leonard Woolley

An autobiography of the archeologist Sir Leonard Woolley tracing his career as an archaeologist from his first dig in England in 1907 to Syria in 1948. Gives a desciption of his state of archaeology before there were any Universities teaching the subject, how he had been trained as a classicist and in antiquities before becoming an archaeologist and having to learn on the job. He then moves down to Egypt as the apprentice of an archaeologist named MacIver. While digging in Turkey in 1912 at the ruins of Carchemish he gives an interesting and frank discussion of how he encouraged looting and smuggled the artifacts to the British Museum under the nose of the Turkish government authorities. In this way the book is a representation of the changes that archaeology went through during its transition from amateur treasure hunters to professional scientists through the career of one of its practitioners who is in the middle of these changes.