Crystal-Margaret Bennett, (20 August 1918 – 12 August 1987) was a British archaeologist. A student of

Kathleen Kenyon Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978) was a British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She led excavations of Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, from 1952 to 1958, and has been called ...

, Bennett was a pioneer of archaeological research in

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

and founded the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History.

Early life and education

Crystal-Margaret Rawlings was born to George Rawlings, a soldier, and Elizabeth Rawlings (née Jennings) of Alderney, one of the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

, on 20 August 1918. She was the third of five children. She attended La Retraite Convent School in Bristol and then Bristol University, where she studied English. At the age of 22 she married draughtsman Philip Roy Bennett (1907–1986), converting from Roman Catholicism to the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

. The marriage lasted six years; the couple separated in 1946, a year after the birth of their only child Simon Bennett. Following the divorce, Bennett moved in with her former mother-in-law and raised her son Simon. In 1954, Bennett enrolled at the Institute of Archaeology in London (now part of

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

) to study for a

postgraduate diploma A postgraduate diploma (PgD, PgDip, PGDip, PG Dip., PGD, Dipl. PG, PDE) is a postgraduate qualification awarded after a university degree, which supplements the original degree and awards them with a graduate diploma. Countries that award pos ...

in the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces in the West. She participated in excavations led by Sheppard Frere, and directed two excavations of her own: a

Roman villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas n ...

near

Cox Green, Berkshire Cox Green is a civil parish in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire. It is a large suburb of Maidenhead with most of its housing west of the A404(M) Maidenhead bypass and south of the A4 road. The remainder of this area is ...

; and a

Romano-British The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, ...

temple near her home in Bruton, Somerset. She then took a second postgraduate diploma in Palestinian Archaeology, which she studied under

Edomite excavations

After completing her second postgraduate diploma, Bennett was invited to join Kenyon's final season of excavations at Jericho in 1957–58, and subsequently contributed to the second volume of Kenyon's monograph on the site. She then went on to work with Peter Parr at Petra (1958–1963), and again with Kenyon in Jerusalem (1961–1963). It was whilst working with Parr at Petra that Bennett first became interested in the

Edomites Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...

, which was to become the focus of her later career. She conducted excavations at an Edomite site in Petra in 1958, 1960 and 1963. It was here that Bennett also began her reputation for overcoming considerable logistical obstacles: the site was located atop one of Petra's most inaccessible peaks, '' Umm al-Biyara'', and all supplies had to be carried up to the summit by hand or else airlifted in by helicopter. Bennett's work there significantly revised the previously accepted chronology of the Edomites, placing them in the 7th century BCE rather than the 13th. She subsequently excavated the Edomite sites of Tawilan (1968–70, 1982), near Petra, where Bennett discovered the first

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sh ...

tablet found in Jordan; Buseirah in southern Jordan (1971–74, 1980), identified with the biblical

Bozrah Busaira ( ar, بُصَيْرا, buṣayrā; also Busayra, Busairah or Buseirah) is a town in Tafilah Governorate, Jordan, located between the towns of Tafilah ( Tophel) and Shoubak and closer to the latter. Bozrah ( he, בָּצְרָה ; also ...

, the capital of the Edomite kingdom; and a number of mining sites around Wadi Dana and Wadi Faynan.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bennett, Crystal 1918 births 1987 deaths British archaeologists British women archaeologists Officers of the Order of the British Empire Archaeologists of the Near East Alumni of the UCL Institute of Archaeology People from Alderney 20th-century archaeologists