The Wheeler-Kenyon method is a method of archaeological

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

 excavation. The technique draws its origins from Mortimer Wheeler

Mortimer Wheeler

Brigadier Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH, CIE, MC, FBA, FSA , was one of the best-known British archaeologists of the twentieth century.-Education and career:...

's work at Verulamium

Verulamium

Verulamium was an ancient town in Roman Britain. It was sited in the southwest of the modern city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, Great Britain. A large portion of the Roman city remains unexcavated, being now park and agricultural land, though much has been built upon...

 (1930-35), and was later refined by Kathleen Kenyon

Kathleen Kenyon

Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon , was a leading archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She is best known for her excavations in Jericho in 1952-1958.-Early life:...

 during her excavations at Jericho

Jericho

Jericho ; is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of more than 20,000. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently...

 (1952-58).

The Wheeler-Kenyon system involves digging within a series of 5x5 meter squares set within a larger grid. This leaves a (1 meter wide) freestanding wall of earth--known as a "balk"--on each side of a unit. These vertical slices of earth allow archaeologists to compare the exact provenance

Provenance

Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...

 of a found object or feature to adjacent layers of earth ("strata"). During Kenyon's excavations at Jericho, this technique helped discern the long and complicated occupational history of the site. It was believed that this approach allowed more precise stratigraphic observations than earlier "horizontal exposure" techniques which relied on architectural and ceramic

Ceramic

A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...

 analysis.

There are several problems associated with the Wheeler-Kenyon Method. First, this stratigraphic

Stratigraphy

Stratigraphy, a branch of geology, studies rock layers and layering . It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks....

 dating technique can only be applied to a site that has formed in identifiable layers; this criterion excludes many sites in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. It also cannot be used on large-scale projects, and leaves no opportunity for re-excavation by future archaeologists using improved techniques.

Sources

• Joseph A. Callaway, "Dame Kathleen Kenyon 1906-1978," The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 42, No. 2. (Spring, 1979), pp. 122-125.
• jstor.org
• online.vkrp.org