Thread by @MichaelDPress

The Guardian's travel section features Hester Stanhope, who "abandoned her privileged background . . . leading archaeological digs"

What's the truth?
(Hint: It has almost nothing to do with archaeology)
theguardian.com/travel/2020/ma…

Stanhope was the granddaughter of William Pitt the Elder (niece of Pitt the Younger). But while she may have abandoned the familiarity of England, she hardly abandoned the privileged life of the aristocracy . . .
npg.org.uk/collections/se…

The article itself undermines these sorts of claims.
We're told that she lived the last years of her life in her own private fortress.

Here is the "small house" near the Lebanese village of Joun that she rented -- 38 rooms (she had it enlarged), complete with English garden and servants, dominating a hilltop.
(Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, vols. 1 and 3, 1845)

How do we know so much about her life? Largely from the 3 volumes of her memoirs and 3 additional volumes of her travels, all written by her personal physician
(Charles Lewis Meryon, painted by Arminius Mayer, c. 1846, Royal College of Physicians, London)
artuk.org/discover/artwo…

Favorite anecdote: when Stanhope visited Palmyra the village's inhabitants all came out to greet her, with the girls climbing up on the column pedestals along the Great Colonnade to be living statues -- all done spontaneously, the doctor ensures us.

(Travels vol. 2)

Meanwhile, the Guardian clarifies that her "pioneering archaeological work" was actually a supposed map marking where treasure was buried under the ruins of a mosque at ʿAsqalān (Ashkelon).
Apparently the Guardian thinks archaeology is really an x-marks-the-spot treasure map?

In reality it apparently wasn't a map so much as a manuscript describing where huge amounts of money were buried in the Levant, including under a mosque at Ashkelon.
(Travels vol. 3)

Stanhope visited ʿAsqalān in 1815, with an entourage including the governor of the district, Muhammad Aga (aka Muhammad Abu Nabbut, "father of the club"), who pressed some 100 villagers into service to hunt treasure at the site, without pay.

The actual excavation was just a hundred workers digging a big hole at the ruins of a building (which they identified as a mosque).
The doctor noted in passing walls, pottery vessels and sherds, none of them described in detail or drawn, and none saved.

Stanhope didn't find any treasure, but did find a large part of an over-life-sized statue (a Roman emperor?) -- which she ordered be smashed into pieces and thrown in the sea!

Why did Stanhope have the statue destroyed?
According to the doctor, she insisted that she was treasure hunting on behalf of the Sultan and not herself, and didn't want any other English travelers to remove it.

As @NeilSilberman has pointed out, this was at the exact same time that Britain was debating what to do with the "Elgin marbles", the reliefs of the Parthenon taken from Athens to London.
Stanhope's smashing of the statue was a progressive position!?
cojs.org/restoring_the_…

Sometimes this treasure hunt is retroactively seen as the beginning of modern archaeological "excavation" in the country.
Example: modern writers sometimes say that Stanhope found evidence that the building was 1st a temple, then a church, and finally a mosque.

In reality, they claimed the building was a ruined mosque (unclear if true), then simply assumed that it was once a temple & church because of the site's history.

It's not like they dug different strata! They had no idea how to date the building or any concept of stratigraphy!

According to the doctor, the dig did have at least one concrete result: Muhammad Abu Nabbut got a source of marble for his construction work in Jaffa.

What can we learn from how the Guardian treats Stanhope.

1. So many people have *no idea* what archaeologists do. People believe the goal is to make individual finds -- the most common question I've been asked is what's the best find I've made.

It's not their fault, of course -- articles like this reinforce it.
The point of archaeology is to learn how people lived in the past, not to treasure hunt.
(Thanks Indiana Jones)

2. This is what happens when we uncritically elevate 19th century European women who "explored" or traveled and collected material in the Middle East.
We prove that ultra-privileged elite European women could exploit the region just like ultra-privileged elite European men!