The Kish Collection

Excavations, 1923-1933

In 1921, Stephen Langdon of Oxford University wrote to Berthold Laufer, then Chief Curator of the Anthropology Department of The Field Museum, to propose a joint Mesopotamian expedition. Laufer expressed The Field Museum’s interest, and in 1921-22 the expedition’s eventual chief financier, Mr. H. Weld-Blundell, conducted a survey of important sites in Mesopotamia, settling on Kish as the site holding the most interest and archaeological potential. In March of 1923, Mr. Ernest Mackay, protégé of the famed archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, began the first season of excavations of the Joint Oxford-Field Museum expedition to Kish. Excavations continued during the winter months of the next ten years, from 1923-33, under the absentee direction of Stephen Langdon who, although serving as the director of the project, visited the excavations only twice, in 1924 and 1926. Mackay served as field director through the 1925-26 season, after which Mr. Louis Charles Watelin became field director. Watelin served as field director for the remainder of the project.

During the course of the ten years of excavation, work was conducted on seventeen different mounds both inside and outside the ancient boundaries of Kish. As was the custom of the day, the excavations were absolutely enormous in scale. Both Mackay and Watelin employed hundreds of local men and boys who worked at a break-neck pace to remove soil to depths of fifteen or more meters in trenches tens of meters on a side.

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