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

by Amanda Adams

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.”