Dorothy Garrod

Dorothy Garrod, 1913

Dorothy Garrod (born May 5, 1892 in London , † December 18, 1968 in Cambridge ) was one of the most important prehistorians in Great Britain . They explored the Old Stone Age ( Paleolithic ), the cultural level of the Upper Palaeolithic ( Upper Palaeolithic ) in Europe and the Middle Stone Age ( Mesolithic ) in Palestine. She is considered to be the second woman, after Johanna Mestorf , who researched the life of early humans. She was the first woman to receive a professorship at Cambridge University .

Life

Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod was born on May 5, 1892, to a family of four doctors. Her father Archibald Garrod , who worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital , is considered one of the discoverers of biochemical inheritance. Her brothers Alfred-Noel and Thomas died in World War I , and their younger brother Basil died of influenza in 1919 .

After attending a private school, the Birklands School in St Albans , Garrod studied history at Newnham College , Cambridge from 1913 to 1916 . Her family lived in Malta during the First World War . Here she visited the temple excavations of the archaeologist Themistocles Żammit , which gave her an impression of Mediterranean prehistory. In 1921 she met the scientist Robert Ranulph Marett in Oxford , who transferred his enthusiasm for the religions of early humans to Garrod. He brought her with the French prehistorians Henri Édouard Breuil and Henri Graf Bégouën (1863-1956) in connection.

From 1922 Dorothy Garrod worked under Henri Breuil at the "Institut de Paléontologie Humaine" in Paris . Here she made friends with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), who was then examining Asian skeletons. At the suggestion of Henri Breuil, Garrod examined the rock roof Devil's Tower ( Gibraltar ) from 1925 to 1927 . Here she was able to recover 50,000 year old remains of a young Neanderthal in 1926 .

Garrod with two of her colleagues in 1928

From January 1928 Dorothy Garrod worked in Palestine . Here she examined the Skubah cave in Wadi An Natuf ( West Bank ) and discovered evidence of the cultural stage that she later (1957) referred to as " Natufien ". The Natufien, which existed between the 10th and 8th millennium BC Existed in Palestine, represents the transition between the late Paleolithic and early Neolithic ( Neolithic ). After an expedition in Kurdistan , Garrod was the director of the excavations in the Carmel Mountains . Here too, sensational finds were made under her leadership. On the west side of the Carmel, in the Tabun Cave ("oven cave "), the approximately 41,000-year-old skeleton of a Neanderthal woman was discovered, in the cave of Skhul ("children's cave ") her then scientific assistant, Theodore D. McCown , found ten between 100,000 and 80,000 years old skeletons of five men, two women and three children.

The term Gravettien , introduced by Garrod in 1938, describes a cultural stage of the Paleolithic between about 26,000 and 19,000 BC. And leads back to the half-cave "La Gravette" near Bayac in the French Dordogne department . The “Gravettia” was common in Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Russia.

For her publication of "The Stone Age of Mount Carmel" (1938) the University of Oxford awarded her the title "Doctor of Science" ("Doctor of Natural Sciences"). In the period from 1939 to 1952 she was Professor of Archeology ( Disney Professor of Archeology ) in Cambridge and thus the first female professor there.

During the Second World War , academic work in Cambridge stagnated. From 1942 to 1945 Garrod worked for the "Photographic Intelligence Service", through which she gained valuable experience for the evaluation of aerial photographs, which she used to identify archaeological sites. Building on this experience, she later promoted aerial archeology .

From 1949 until she left in 1952, Garrod headed the Department for Archeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. She then built a small house in Chamtoine ( France ) and did her own research, spending the winter in Paris . From 1965 her health deteriorated. After suffering a stroke on June 30, 1968, she moved to Cambridge, where she died on December 18, 1968 at the age of 76.

In April 1968 she received the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries of London . Since 1952 she was a member of the British Academy .

Publications (selection)

• The Upper Palaeolithic Age in Britain. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1926.
• with Leonard H. Dudley Buxton, Grafton Elliot Smith and Dorothea MA Bate : Excavation of a Mousterian rock-shelter at Devil's Tower, Gibraltar. In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. 58, 1928, pp. 33-113, JSTOR 4619528 .
• with Dorothea MA Bate: The Stone Age of Mount Carmel. 2 volumes. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1937-1939.

literature

• Gertrude Caton-Thompson: Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod, 1892–1968 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 55 , 1970, pp. 339-361 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk ).

Web links

• archaeologie-news.blog.de
• Breaking new ground: Dorothy Garrod (1892–1968). An archaeologist conquers the elite university of Cambridge (K. Geßner)