Lydia Carr, Tessa Verney Wheeler

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Women in Archaeology Kathleen Sheppard Published online: 05 Jun 2015.

Click for updates To cite this article: Kathleen Sheppard (2015) Women in Archaeology, Women: A Cultural Review, 26:1-2, 154-155, DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2015.1035062 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2015.1035062

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Women in Archaeology Lydia Carr, Tessa Verney Wheeler: Women and Archaeology before World War Two, Oxford University Press, 2012, £72.00 hardback 978 0 1996 4022 5.

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Carr’s recent biography of archaeologist Tessa Verney Wheeler is a long-needed counterpoint to the hagiographic treatments of Verney Wheeler’s husband, R. E. M. Wheeler. Verney Wheeler’s short but productive career has, until now, been lost within accounts of Wheeler’s long, very public one. The book is organized largely chronologically, but in many parts Carr flashes forward or back in time to contextualize certain activities. This aspect is not confusing; on the contrary, it is extremely helpful in explaining Verney Wheeler’s life decisions. Throughout the book, Carr focuses on three main aspects of Verney Wheeler’s career: her contribution to archaeological methods; her teaching activity; and her work with the public through the London Museum (now the Museum of London). Verney Wheeler’s methods were focused on smaller-scale, technical parts of the excavations she and Wheeler worked on, and she trained a number of students in her methods in the field. She was a pragmatic and organized digger. Her notebooks are well written and easy to sort through, according to Carr. In addition, she is credited with developing the object context sheets which, Carr argues, ‘are still a familiar and essential feature of today’s digs’ (247). In her teaching, Verney Wheeler was like many other women in academia in the early twentieth century. She had a number of male students who went on to careers in museum work or archaeology, such as V. E. Nash-Williams. She also had female students, such as Veronica Seton-Williams, whose careers could take a different trajectory than her own as gender roles changed in this period. Finally, her work engaged with the public through her lectures at the London Museum or through encouraging non-experts to visit dig sites. Both she and Wheeler believed, and demonstrated, that engaging the public in archaeological work was crucial to public financial support. Carr has clearly delved deeply into archival materials at the institutions where Verney Wheeler was most active, and has interviewed people who knew her best. These types of resources are invaluable when knitting together this kind of narrative, about a woman who has been sadly neglected in archaeological history. Verney Wheeler’s life was full YDIA

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of activity. She was always busy—whether it was with her work, Wheeler’s work, their son Michael or domestic duties, she rarely took a break. This full life allows Carr to direct the story where she would like the reader to focus. However, according to Carr, it was partly this constant activity that led to Verney Wheeler’s early death. The other part was stress, due to her husband’s numerous extramarital affairs. There are few issues with this book, but one that the reader may notice quite quickly is the frequent and sometimes overbearing presence of Mortimer, or Rik, Wheeler–as he was in life, so he is in his wife’s biography. Sometimes it is easy for the reader to wonder if the biography is about Rik or if it is about his wife. Verney Wheeler’s career, as that of many women in archaeology in this period (such as Hilda Petrie, Nina de Garies Davies and Winifred Brunton), was distinctly and irrevocably tied to her husband’s. However, one does wonder if details of his life could have been removed just a bit more from Verney Wheeler’s activities in this book in particular. But the information does help, in the end, to contextualize all that Verney Wheeler did in her life. Despite the presence of Wheeler, the book goes much further into Verney Wheeler’s life than any other biographical treatment of her. It provides points of comparison for other women of the era, as well as for women in other generations of professional archaeologists. It is a useful source and an interesting read for anyone interested in women in archaeology, British archaeology, the history of the Institute of Archaeology, or museum history from this period.