Digging with Petrie: Gerald Lankester Harding at Tell Jemmeh, 1926–1927

Abstract

Gerald Lankester Harding (1901–1979) was an influential archaeologist and epigrapher whose field career began in 1926, when he set out to work for Flinders Petrie at Tell Jemmeh in British Mandate Palestine. Harding’s experiences on this, his first dig, were captured through his personal diary and photographs, which form part of a larger archive now housed in the UCL Institute of Archaeology Collections. This material is presented here for the first time, exploring how Harding came into archaeology, what it was like to work and live on a Petrie excavation, and to show how personal histories like this can contribute to a wider understanding of historic archaeological practice and methodology.