John Winter Crowfoot
| John Winter Crowfoot BA CBE MA | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Born | 1873 | ||||||||
| Died | 1959 | ||||||||
| Residence |
Mason University College, Birmingham The Sub-Deaconry, Lincoln [1902] Khartum, Sudan [1905] Ministry of Education, Cairo [1909] Khartoum, Sudan [1919] Geldeston, Beccles, Suffolk [1927] The Old House, Geldeston, Beccles, Suffolk [census] | ||||||||
| Occupation |
archaeologist academic | ||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
1900.01.30 proposed by J.L. Myres
Notes From Elsewhere
John Winter Crowfoot (1873-1959), a British archaeologist, was the first president of (what may be the second incarnation of a) Rotary Club in Jerusalem.
He was the son of J.H. Crowfoot, Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral. He was educated at Marlborough College and Brasenose College, Oxford. He had an early interest in archaeology and in 1897 spent a year travelling in Anatolia and Greece as a student of the British School of Archaeology in Athens. From 1899-1900 he was Lecturer in Classics in Birmingham University. In 1901 he joined the Egyptian Civil Service as Assistant Master of Education and in 1903 became Deputy Principal of Gordon College, Khartoum. In 1909, he returned briefly to Egypt as an Inspector in the Ministry of Education. In 1914 he became Director of Education and Principal of Gordon College, a post he held until his retirement from the Sudan Civil Service in 1926. At the same time, he became Director of the Department of Antiquities of the Sudan. Following his 'retirement', he succeeded Professor John Garstang as Director of the British School of Archaeology (BSAJ) in Jerusalem. Under Garstang, the BSAJ and the Department of Antiquities of Palestine had been jointly run and the BSAJ had received a Treasury grant. In 1926 the two were separated and the School lost its grant, as well as its headquarters building. Crowfoot overcame these difficulties by establishing a close collaboration with the American School of Oriental Research, which had just built its own new headquarters. There, the library of the BSAJ was housed and the Crowfoots and the students of the BSAJ found a hospitable welcome. Thereafter, Crowfoot began to carried out a major programme of excavations, beginning with the PEF excavations on the Hill of Ophel in Jerusalem in 1927. This was followed by the Joint BSAJ Yale University Excavations at Jerash/Gerasa in 1928-1930, and the Joint BSAJ, Harvard University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Palestine Exploration Fund excavations at Samaria-Sebaste from 1931-1935. During the first of these excavations, on 11 July 1927, while work was being carried out at a depth of 15.24 m, an extremely powerful earthquake shook the sides of the trench, but only dislodged a few pebbles on to the excavators. Crowfoot�s work in this period was of the greatest importance for Levantine archaeology, with major contributions to the understanding of the Iron Age ceramic sequence, the eastern terra sigillata, and pioneering work on early churches. He retired as Director of the BSAJ in late 1935. He continued to be active in the field, however, with the final reports of the work he had directed at Samaria-Sebaste, the final volume of which was published shortly after his death. On his return to Britain, Crowfoot became Chairman of the Palestine Exploration Fund from 1945 to 1950. From 1951-1953 he was Chairman of the Council of the revived BSAJ, and from 1953, until his death, its President.
J.W. Crowfoot, a young student at the British School at Athens, who explored additional tombs in the same area as Walters in April 1898. Up to 40 men were employed over this period, though only eight days in total were actually spent digging. Some ‘fifty or sixty’ tombs along with ‘several wells’ were excavated between 12 April and the end of the month.
Crowfoot's letters to the Principal Librarian of the British Museum are rather more detailed than those of Walters. They included some information about the form of the tombs, including a sketch plan of one example, a double-chambered tomb entered from a single pit dromos (numbers 11 and 12)., The surviving records list the contents of 11 tombs (confusingly numbered up to 13, as 7 and 10 were not apparently used or described). Several of the tombs were allocated to the Cyprus Museum and the landowner (as was the case with a share of Walters’ material the previous year). ...
C.B.E. 1919. Honorary degree Oxford. Mainly worked in Middle East and Sudan; e.g., Director of Education Sudan Government and Principal, Gordon College Khartoum 1917-26; Director, British School of Archaeology, Jerusalem 1927-36. Publications of archaeology and Middle East churches. One of his daughters became Dorothy Hodgkin FRS, Fellow of Somerville.
Publications
External Publications
Samaria-Sebaste: Reports of the Work of the Joint Expedition in 1931-33 and of the British Expedition in 1935
House Publications
Survivals among the Kappadokian Zizilbash 1900
6. Pot Making in Dongola Province, Sudan; by J. W. Crowfoot. Man Vol. 33 (Jan., 1933)
Related Material Details
RAI Material
census, Photos
Other Material
PRM field collector