Success Quote by Kathleen Kenyon

Archaeology’s drama often arrives disguised as bookkeeping, and Kenyon’s line is a perfect specimen: dry on the surface, quietly seismic underneath. “It has been mentioned” sounds like institutional modesty, a scientist’s way of lowering her profile while tightening the claim’s credibility. She’s not selling a revelation; she’s recording a chain of observation, implicitly inviting peers to trace the logic back through notes, sections, and strata. The understatement is the point.

The phrase “Trench I” is doing heavy cultural work. A trench is both a surgical cut and a wound: an intentional incision into the ground that produces evidence by destroying context. Kenyon’s method (and reputation) rested on making that cut readable, turning soil into a timeline. So when she notes “three successive stages,” she’s not merely counting layers. She’s asserting sequence: not just that defenses existed, but that they were rebuilt, revised, and reimagined across time. That small word “successive” pushes the site from static monument to living problem set - a community responding to threat, labor, and changing priorities.

Even “these defences” carries a subdued argument. Defenses imply perceived danger and organized authority; they hint at social coordination, surplus resources, and a reason to protect something worth keeping. In Kenyon’s era, excavations in places like Jericho were also entangled with larger narratives about origins and antiquity. Her careful phrasing sidesteps grand mythmaking while still providing what everyone wants: a disciplined, stratigraphic foothold for big historical stories. The intent is restraint; the subtext is confidence.