Гертруда Кэтон-Томпсон: Жизнь и вклад в археологию Египта и Зимбабве.

British archaeologist (1888–1985)

Gertrude Caton Thompson, (1 February 1888 – 18 April 1985) was an English archaeologist at a time when participation by women in the discipline was uncommon. Much of her archaeological work was conducted in Egypt. However, she also worked on expeditions in Zimbabwe, Malta, and South Arabia. Her notable contributions to the field of archaeology include creating a technique for excavating archaeological sites and information on Paleolithic to Predynastic civilizations in Zimbabwe and Egypt. Caton Thompson held many official positions in organizations such as the Prehistoric Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Gertrude Caton Thompson was born to William Caton Thompson and Ethel Page in 1888 in London, England, and attended private schools in Paris and in Eastbourne, including the Links School, run by Miss Hawtrey. Her interest in archaeology began on a trip to Egypt with her mother in 1911, followed by a series of lectures on Ancient Greece given by Sarah Paterson at the British Museum. An inheritance received in 1912 helped ensure her financial independence and support her later excavations. Caton Thompson's first experience in the field came in 1915 working as a bottle washer in an excavation in France. The following year she began attending courses at Newnham College, Cambridge, before joining further excavations in Egypt with Petrie and Guy Brunton in 1924. El Badari, and Qau el Kebir. Caton Thompson took a special interest in all aspects of Prehistoric Egypt and was one of the first archaeologists to look at the full time spectrum from the Palaeolithic through to Predynastic Egypt. Caton Thompson not only found a number of archaeological artifacts from Egypt, she also organized their display in the Egyptian Exhibition in England. While working in the Badari region 1923–24 she took the initiative to explore prehistoric settlement remains at Hemamieh. Caton Thompson's work at the site was distinguished by its meticulousness. Caton Thompson began her work by organizing the site into ten by thirty foot intervals. Along with her excavation techniques, Caton Thompson was also the first to use air surveys to locate archaeological sites. In 1925 Caton Thompson and the geologist Elinor Wight Gardner began the first archaeological and geological survey of the northern Faiyum, where they sought to correlate ancient lake levels with archaeological stratification. Caton Thompson found the earliest farming civilization to date in the Fayum region of Egypt, estimated to about 4000 B. C. They continued working in the Faiyum over the next two years for the Royal Anthropological Institute where they discovered two unknown Neolithic cultures, mainly based on evidence from their Kom K and Kom W excavations. Caton Thompson and Wight Gardner also worked on prehistoric sites at Kharga Oasis in 1930. Her publication of "Kharga Oasis in Prehistory" was the first publication of the new Athlone Press of the University of London. Also the flints she was allowed to bring back to London are permanently housed in the Institute of Archaeology in London. This led to research more broadly on the palaeolithic civilizations of north Africa, which Caton Thompson published in 1952. Caton Thompson made her first visit to the Kharga Oasis in 1928 during her expedition to the Zimbabwe excavations. There were three expeditions to the Kharga Oasis from 1930 to 1933. Elinor Gardner did the surveying for many of the excavations. Caton Thompson had to excavate only for Paleolithic artifacts because there was such a variety of prehistoric civilizations at the Kharga Oasis including Neolithic artifacts. Caton Thompson determined that the Kharga Scarp contained water without rainfall, which helped to supply water to a Neolithic civilization. Since the Kharga Scarp contained many Paleolithic sites, she was able to excavate many implements used by those civilizations.

In 1928, the British Academy invited Caton Thompson to investigate the origins of ruins in southeastern Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwe. The site contained three sets of structures which contained multiple buildings. Caton Thompson claimed to keep hostile letters from local experts in a file marked "insane". Modern archaeologists now agree that the city was the product of a Shona speaking African civilisation.

In 1932, she employed Mary Leakey to illustrate her book The Desert Fayum, greatly influencing her later career in paleoanthropology. Towards the end of 1937 Caton Thompson and Elinor Gardner, accompanied by Freya Stark, initiated the first systematic excavation in the Yemen at Hadhramaut (coincidentally, also a region explored by Theodore Bent). However, relations between Caton Thompson and Stark were notoriously strained, with Stark deriding an anonymous but identifiable female archaeologist in her book A Winter in Arabia in 1940. Caton Thompson retired from fieldwork after the Second World War. A long time friend of Dorothy Hoare, a colleague from Cambridge, Caton Thompson bought and shared a house with Hoare. After Hoare married Jose "Toty" M. de Navarro, son of the American actress Mary Anderson, and himself another Cambridge lecturer in archaeology, the Navarros continued to share the house with Caton Thompson. When she and the Navarros retired from academic life in 1956, Caton Thompson moved with them to their home in Broadway, Worcestershire Court Farm. Caton Thompson went on to have her memoirs released as an autobiography entitled "Mixed Memoirs" in 1983. She would reside with them and their son, Michael for the rest of her life. She died in 1985, in her 97th year at Broadway, Worcestershire.

In 1938 she was offered the post of Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge but rejected the role which was subsequently accepted by Dorothy Garrod. However, she was a research fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1923 and honorary fellow from 1934 to 1945, receiving an honorary LittD in 1954. She was the first female President of the Prehistoric Society from 1940 to 1946, whilst also being elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1944. Caton Thompson was also elected to the vice presidency of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1944. She received the Huxley Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1946. In 1934 Caton Thompson was also the first woman to receive the Rivers Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute. In 1961 she was a founding member of the British School of History and Archaeology in East Africa and was made an honorary fellow after serving on the council for 10 years.