THE TOMBS AND MOON TEMPLE OF HUREIDHA (HADHRAMAUT)

Oxford, England: University Press by John Johnson for the Society of Antiquaries, 1944. Hardcover. Very Good. Quarto, 10 1/2 in. x 8 1/2 in. pp. 191, LXXXI plates. Original beige paper boards, black printed letters. Boards very clean, no spotting or discoloring. Black letter title and author to spine. Spine mildly creased but very sound. Internal pages very clean. Plates include photographs, diagrams, maps, charts, and excavation sites and items. The female archaeologist Gertrude Canton-Thompson (1888-1985) led an archeological team to excavate 4th and 5th century BCE tombs in southern Arabia. The Oxford geologist Elinor Gardner and Freya Stark accompanied her. As L.P. Kirwan writes of these three women, they "carried out in a region then rarely visited by Western, let alone female, travelers, they were the first scientific excavations in southern Arabia." The present report details their findings of various pre-Islamic religious artifacts and sites, including shrines, structures, and ceramics. Canton-Thompson was a "formidable personality, a trenchant critic, adamant in academic argument, and an indefatigable worker." (ODNB) This book is an artifact itself of the intellectual labor of three mid-century women.