The Tombs and Moon Temple of Hureidha (Hadhramaut).

1944. Oxford, Printed at the University Press by John Johnson for The Society of Antiquaries, 1944. 4to. Original printed boards; pp. xv, 191; 81 plates showing numerous photographic images of the area, the excavations, finds, plans, etc., including some folding, one folding table; toning to the margins of the boards, internally very clean, a very good copy. First edition, no. 13 of the Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Caton-Thompson was drawn to the Hadhramaut by her interest in the question of Arab influence in South-East Africa. She joined Freya Stark (returning to the area after the visits described in her The Southern Gates of Arabia), but Stark remained behind, beset by illness, when Caton-Thompson and her companion Elinor Gardner moved on to Hureidha. The present volume records the successful results of this important and early archaeological expedition, one of few in an area that "then was archaeologically still terra incognita" (Preface). 'Caton-Thompson's last excavations, in 1937, were the only ones outside Africa apart from some fieldwork in Malta in her student days. These were at al-Huraydah in the Hadhramaut, southern Arabia, where she excavated the Moon Temple and tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries bc. Carried out in a region then rarely visited by Western, let alone female, travellers, they were the first scientific excavations in southern Arabia. Again she was accompanied by Elinor Gardner. A third, less compatible, member of the party was the writer and traveller Freya Stark. The Tombs and Moon Temple of Hureidha, Hadramaut appeared in 1944' (ODNB). Some of the plates are by Freya Stark, who accompanied Thompson on this expedition.