Gertrude Caton-Thompson (1889–1985)

Gertrude Caton-Thompson was born in London, England, and attended private schools in Eastbourne and Paris. Her interest in archaeology was sparked by childhood travels through Egypt, Greece, and Malta. As a young woman, she met T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. During World War I, she worked for the British Ministry of Shipping. She then enrolled University College London, where she was taught by Margaret Murray, Sir Flinders Petrie, and Dorothea Bate. An inheritance helped to ensure her financial independence and support her work. While completing her studies at the British School of Archaeology in Egypt in the 1920s, she and geologist E.W. (Elinor Wight) Gardner began the first archaeological survey of northern Fayyūm, the oldest city in Egypt. Her work there pushed the origins of Egyptian culture back to 5000 BCE. In Rhodesia in 1928-29, she directed studies of the Zimbabwe architectural ruins, contradicting the popular view that they were the remains of biblical Ophir. Returning to Egypt, she conducted excavations at the Kharga Oasis, Al-Wāḥāt al-Khārijah, and then worked on the tombs and temples of Hureidha in the Hadramaut in southern Arabia. In 1948, she advanced the theory that the earliest human civilization may have originated in central Africa. Her writings included The Desert Fayum (1935), Kharga Oasis in Prehistory (1952), and Mixed Memoirs (1983). She served as a vice-president of the Royal Anthropological Institute and was a governor of Bedford College at the University of London and the School of Oriental Studies.