Ladies of the Field: Early Women Archaeologists and Their Search for Adventure

by Amanda Adams

The very first to “scale the heights” of a camel and touch patent leather shoe to Egyptian sand was Amelia Edwards. Eventually nicknamed the “Godmother of Egyptology,” Edwards sailed the Nile on a houseboat as early as 1873, sketching the pyramids and eventually making an archaeological discovery all her own.

Archaeology’s essence is to uncover the origins of things, the epicenters of change, the evolution of style, technology, and everything else that makes us human.

Hair cropped mannishly short, a board strapped beneath her white linen shirt, and a red ribbon looped through the buttonhole of her well-cut suit jacket, Jane Dieulafoy embraced la vie de l’homme. In a day when new brides were expected to tuck into homemaking, to fluff the nest and prepare for babies to arrive, the Dieulafoys began their marriage in a radically different way. Shortly after their wedding, Jane Dieulafoy dressed herself convincingly as a boy and fought as a front-line solider alongside her husband, Marcel, during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. She camped with the men, never revealing her identity as a woman, and trekked with the army of the Loire through harsh conditions and definite danger. Later, as her interest in archaeology blossomed and her explorations in the field took her to what is now Iran, she adopted the dress of a western man completely. Forsaking the ruffled petticoat, Dieulafoy was one of the first European women to slip into a pair of pants. In doing so she became something of celebrity in nineteenth-century Paris where she was both admired and mocked. She never went back to women’s clothing. Her cross-dressing had something of a Charlie Chaplin effect; she looked a touch comic in pictures and sketches yet completely put together and fashionable, her shirt buttoned high up her neck, waistcoat snug, trousers perfectly tailored, black shoes laced and polished.

Boyd Hawes embodied archaeology’s turn away from treasure seeking and toward data gathering. With her finds stacking high, Boyd Hawes was all the more remarkable as an archaeologist because she did two things: first, published her discoveries in timely and thorough fashion, and second, became the first woman invited to lecture for the Archaeological Institute of America. This was major. It announced her stature as a true scientist in a field of men. Her talks were not in the engaging and popular style of Amelia Edwards; they were sharp and technical. Likewise, Boyd Hawes’s story of archaeology wasn’t told through a lens of emotion. It was more a tale of perseverance and character. The Philadelphia Public Ledger of March 5, 1902, reported on Boyd’s success at Gournia: A woman has shattered another tradition and successfully entered unaided a field hitherto occupied almost exclusively by men, namely archaeological exploration . . . The results of Miss Boyd’s work must be considered remarkable, not only because of their character, but because she achieved them alone. Other women have made names in the fields of archaeological research, but these have done so in company with their husbands, who shared glory with them. But Miss Boyd’s work is entirely her own.22

Freed from Victorian society, career strains, and a million places to be, she reveled in a simpler life: eat breakfast (hot tea and eggs); walk the site; complete multiple tasks that can be started, finished, and savored with a feeling of satisfaction; have dinner, some wine, and a biscuit; go to bed, and start the next day anew and in the same way. Life on a dig was rigorous and not always comfortable, but it was also devoid of the chaos or social obligations that the naturally shy Christie was inclined to avoid. Field days were the “most perfect” she had ever known. Standing in a vast and quiet desert landscape, sipping her tea, Christie mused that five thousand years ago, this had been the busy part of the world: a thriving region of commerce, trade, and bustling temples. She considered the dainty china cup in her hand and its long evolution: “Here [during their survey of tells] were the beginnings of civilization, and here, picked up by me, this broken fragment of a clay pot, hand made, with a design of dots and cross-hatching in black paint, is the forerunner of the Woolworth cup out of which this very morning I have drunk my tea . . .”25

Throughout all of the work, Christie was in lockstep with her archaeologist husband; she took part in every aspect of field life for many years afterwards. Christie’s last dig occurred when she was sixty-eight. She and Max were still married and excavating Nimrud. CHRISTIE’S FAMOUS LITERARY creation, the detective Hercule Poirot, explains his approach to crime solving in Death on the Nile: Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition— and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do—clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth—the naked shining truth.”

T.S. Eliot once called archaeology the “reassuring science.” It was the endeavor that made Gertrude Bell feel “most well,” the mystery Agatha Christie was hooked by, the “beloved science” that Zelia Nuttall felt moved to advance. Its allure is timeless. The power of archaeology lies in its rare alchemy: the blend of history, discovery, travel, and adventure. What lies buried underfoot is its own kind of frontier: secrets of the past remain as mysterious to us as the moon. Archaeology is an engagement with questions about what makes us human, what events and which tools brought us here today, how our ancestors saw the world, and what we can learn not just about the past but also from it. Passions