Charles Leonard Woolley

Charles Leonard Woolley

Major Sir Charles Leonard Woolley
File:Woolley, Charles Leonard.jpg
Born	1880
Died	1969
Society Membership

Notes

House Notes

1942 HML North Syria as a cultural link in the ancient world Delivered 24th Nov.

Notes From Elsewhere

Sir Charles Leonard Woolley Kt (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history.[1] Woolley was knighted in 1935 for his contributions to the discipline of archaeology.[2] He married the British archaeologist Katharine Woolley.
In 1905, Woolley became assistant of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Volunteered by Arthur Evans to run the excavations on the Roman site at Corbridge (near Hadrian's Wall) for Francis Haverfield, Woolley began his excavation career there in 1906, later admitting in Spadework that "I had never studied archaeological methods even from books ... and I had not any idea how to make a survey or a ground-plan" (Woolley 1953:15). Nevertheless, the Corbridge Lion was found under his supervision.[4]
Woolley next traveled to Nubia where he worked with David Randall-MacIver on the Eckley Coxe Expedition to Nubia conducted under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Between 1907 and 1911 they conducted archaeological excavations and survey at sites including Areika[5], Buhen[6], and the Meroitic town of Karanog.[7] In 1912–1914, with T. E. Lawrence as his assistant, he excavated the Hittite city of Carchemish. Lawrence and Woolley were apparently working for British Naval Intelligence and monitoring the construction of Germany's Berlin-to-Baghdad railway.[8]
During World War I, Woolley, with Lawrence, was posted to Cairo, where he met Gertrude Bell. He then moved to Alexandria, where he was assigned to work on naval espionage. Turkey captured a ship he was on, and held him for two years in a relatively comfortable prisoner-of-war camp. He received the Croix de Guerre from France at the war's end.[9]
In the following years, Woolley returned to Carchemish, and then worked at Amarna in Egypt.[10]

Publications

External Publications

• Dead Towns and Living Men. Being Pages From An Antiquary's Notebook, Jonathan Cape, 1920
• Ur of the Chaldees, Ernest Benn Limited, 1938 [1929] republished by Penguin Books, revised 1950, 1952
• The Excavations at Ur and the Hebrew Records, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1929
• Digging Up The Past, 1930 , based on talks originally broadcast by the BBC
• Abraham: Recent Discoveries and Hebrew Origins, Faber and Faber London, 1936
• Ur: The first phases, Penguin Books Harmondsworth, 1946
• Syria as a Link Between East and West, 1936
• A Forgotten Kingdom, Penguin Books, 1953
• Spadework: Adventures in Archaeology, 1953
• Excavations at Ur: A Record of 12 Years' Work, 1954
• Alalakh, An Account of the Excavations at Tell, Oxford University Press, 1955
• History of Mankind, 1963 (with Jaquetta Hawkes)
• The Sumerians, 1965