Dorothy Garrod in words and pictures.

Smith, Pamela Jane ; Callander, Jane ; Bahn, Paul G. 等

During the last year an archive has come to light which is of inestimable value to prehistorians: the unpublished papers of the late Disney Professor of Archaeology in the University of Cambridge, Dorothy A.E. Garrod, are intact and available for study in the library of the Musee des Antiquites Nationales, St Germain-en-Laye, France.

The initiative which led to this discovery was taken by one of us (PJS) in the course of research for her Ph.D thesis on the development of prehistory as an academic subject at Cambridge. Dorothy Garrod was appointed to the Disney Chair in 1939, the first prehistorian, and the first woman, to be elected to a professorship at Cambridge. At that time she was Director of Studies in Archaeology & Anthropology at Newnham College, and had directed the excavation of Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic sites in Gibraltar, Western Judaea, Southern Kurdistan, Mount Carmel in Palestine (for which she is most renowned) and Bulgaria. After retirement she continued excavating in Lebanon and in France. Here she had discovered, with her close friend and companion the French pre-historian Suzanne Cassou de Saint Mathurin, the Magdalenian rockshelter Angles-sur-l'Anglin with its superb sculptured frieze. Dorothy Garrod died in 1968, bequeathing her library to Newnham College. It seemed that her papers had not survived: a widely believed myth arose that they had been destroyed, perhaps burnt possibly even by Professor Garrod herself.

In the course of interviewing Professor Garrod's staff and former students PJS began to question this myth. PGB, a friend of Suzanne de St Mathurin in her later years, offered to talk to her acquaintances in France. One of these, Mme Genevieve Pincon, remembered that there was Garrod material among St Mathurin's bequest on her death in 1991 to the Museum at St Germain, which already held and has on display fragments of the sculptures from Angles sur l'Anglin. Neither the staff at the Museum nor the archaeological public was then aware that an archive existed within an archive.

As St Mathurin's legacy was curated, the treasure from a third life was revealed. Germaine Henri-Martin, excavator - with her father of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic site of La Quina in Charente, had completed the trio of prehistorians christened in France with affectionate respect 'Les Trois Graces'. These three friends successively left each other the carefully accumulated remains of their memories and of their moments of complicity through their worldly goods, the documents and objects from the shared passion of their lives, archaeology.

PJS and JC (who is working with Professor Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University on a study of Dorothy Garrod as a pioneer of Palaeolithic archaeology in Palestine in the inter-war years) have now had the opportunity of spending a total of six (PJS) and three (JC) days at the Musee des Antiquites Nationales. In this time approximately two-thirds of the Garrod archive were examined. It is an overwhelming experience. Any visitor wishing to study particular aspects of her work in depth should be prepared to spend as long, or longer. An inventory has been made of the huge collection and a typed provisional catalogue is available: it is thanks to this work by Anne Bertrand, prehistorian, that the archive is now accessible.

There are 15 boxes of Garrod's documents, stored alongside similar boxes containing the St Mathurin and Henri-Martin archives. This touching awareness at the Museum that the Three Graces should thus remain together has a practical aspect also: the librarians believe that as the entire collection is curated, more Garrod papers will be found among those of her two friends. There are three separate photograph albums, and loose packets of photographs are also contained in some of the Garrod boxes. These record her excavations, her excavation colleagues and workers, her friends, her travels, and her cat, and date from the early 1920s until shortly before her death. A selection from the hundreds of prints is reproduced here. It should of course be realized that comparatively few photographs include Dorothy Garrod herself, since most of them were taken by her.

Among the documents are many original handwritten field notes, notebooks, site plans and section drawings from excavations in Palestine at Shukbah and Mount Carmel (mainly El-Wad and Tabun) during the years 1928 to 1934, plus additional documentation on lithics from these sites, notes on their distribution, and typological notes on lithic collections from her own and other sites; records of the excavation (with James H. Gaul and Bruce Howe) at Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria, in 1938 and a diary of the survey in Anatolia which preceded it; also diaries and documentation on the Lebanese sites Abri Zumoffen, Ras el-Kelb, Adlun and Bezez. Draft versions of published papers and correspondence from many distinguished contemporaries are there, and much else besides, too numerous to mention here.

The documents on individual sites are sometimes spread among several boxes of assorted material: the effect of this is the sudden finding of unexpected treasures. A heart-stopping moment for one of us (JC) was the realization that a small bundle of handwritten notes tied with black string was headed 'Shukba 1928', Garrod's first record of the site in the Wadi en-Natuf which inspired the name for the Epipalaeolithic culture she found there.

'4th April,' she writes in her blessedly clear and legible handwriting, 'Drew plan of cave. 5th April. Trench started against E. wall . . . At 70cm. depth found skeleton of child, 165 cm. from wall. It lay on its side with legs drawn up and hands behind head . . .', the first Natufian burial of so many later found. Students of any site with which Dorothy Garrod was associated can be assured of similar experiences and be confident of finding primary source material.(1)

Researchers who are unable to travel to France should know that the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, also holds a collection of Dorothy Garrod's photographs, originally stored in a handsome leather hatbox embossed 'D.G.' in gold lettering. The majority are the negatives of the print collection held at the M.A.N. As negatives they are quite hard to examine, but those from each original roll of film are kept together with Garrod's own 'shotlists'. There is a computer catalogue in preparation?

Acknowledgement. All photographs reproduced in this article are rephotographed from the originals in the Fonds Suzanne Cassou de Saint-Mathurin de la Bibliotheque du Musee des Antiquites Nationales de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. ([C] Photo Man. L. Hamon.)

1 In practical terms, formal requests to consult the archive should be addressed to the Director, Dr. Patrick Perin, Musee des Antiquites Nationales, B.P. 3030, 78103 St. Germain-en-Laye, France. Telephone (33) 1.34.51.53.65, Fax (33) 1.34.51.73.93. A form will be returned to the applicant requesting dates and details of the planned study. Once permission is granted, the Museum, housed in the Chateau of St. Germain, is easily reached: it is walking distance from the R.E.R. station (line A1 from Paris), or the Museum can advise on accommodation in this pleasant town if that is preferred to commuting from Paris. The Library is open every weekday, from 9.00 am to 12 noon, and 1.00 to 5.00 pm. Readers are required to leave during the lunchtime closure. The Conservateur de la Bibliotheque du M.A.N., Madame Bouron, is available on the same telephone and fax numbers as the Director. She and her staff, proud to be the guardians of such precious material, welcome readers with great friendliness. Photocopying of documents is allowed, but must be done by the busy Library staff and thus only a limited amount is possible. A working knowledge of French is a great advantage.

2 The collection is available by appointment on Thursdays and Fridays only. Application for permission to see the material should be made in writing, in the first instance, to Dr Elizabeth Edwards, Assistant Curator, Pitt Rivers Museum, School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PP. Telephone 01865 270927, Fax 01865 270943, e-mail: elizabeth.edwards@prm.ox.ac.uk

References

CATON-THOMPSON, G. 1969. Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod 1892-1968, Proceedings of the British Academy 55: 338-61.

GARROD, D.A.E. 1929. Excavations in the Mugharet el-Wad, near Athlit. April-June 1929, Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement 62: 220-22.

GARROD, D.A.E. & D.M.A. BATE. 1937. The Stone Age of Mount Carmel I. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

HUBLIN, J.-J., C. BARROSO RUIZ, P.M. LARA, M. FONTUGNE & J.-L. REYSS. 1995. The Mousterian site of Zafarraya (Andalucia, Spain): dating and implications on the Palaeolithic peopling processes of Western Europe, Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Sciences de Paris t.321 serie IIa: 931-7.

ZOLLIKOFER, C.P.E., C.P.E., M.S. PONCE DE LEON, R.D. MARTIN & P. STUCKI. 1995. Neanderthal computer skulls, Nature 375: 283-5.