 And I teach and direct the museum at Pacific School of Religion called the Bade Museum. And we're part of a consortium that's co-sponsoring this lecture series, Unsilencing the Archives. And so it's a real pleasure to start things off for our March lecture. And first I'd like to hand over the floor to our Associate Curator, Brooke Norton, who will read our land and decolonization statement. We would like to begin by acknowledging that Berkeley, California is on the territory of the Huchun, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyualone. We respect the land and the people who have stewarded it throughout many generations, and we honor their elders both past and present. We're living in a moment that warrants deep reflection on our past, wherein even our most venerated figures deserve reasonable scrutiny. During his time directing the archaeological excavations at Tel Nasbah, WF Bade participated in harmful stereotyping of Palestinian Arabs that was common among white Americans and Europeans during conducting field work in British Mandate Palestine. Some of these attitudes appear in print in his popular 1934 book, A Manual of Excavation in the Near East. Museums are also scrutinizing their collections, including evaluating the legal status and the ethics with which they were required. As stewards of the legacy of the Bodding Museum and its holdings, it is our responsibility to faithfully evaluate the process by which the collections were acquired within the context of our contemporary moment. One approach is to ask new questions of the archival materials in order to examine critically the manner and impact of archaeological work on Indigenous communities and to investigate the colonial conditions in which it played a part. The Bodding Museum recognizes that its location and collection are part of ongoing and painful colonial legacies that contributed to historical inequalities. These legacies have directly and indirectly impacted populations, locally and abroad, in Palestine where the excavations were conducted under the authority of the British Mandate Government of Palestine. In an effort to bring light to these issues, to serve a broader public audience online and to connect to the local community that it serves, the museum is taking action to become a more inclusive, welcoming and equitable institution that practices the philosophy of radical inclusion adopted by its parent institution, Pacific School of Religion. One of these steps is the creation of open access web exhibitions and public programming like this lecture series which highlight decolonizing themes. We invite you to participate in these programs so that together we can listen, learn and work towards creating a more inclusive museum community. Thank you for joining us today. Very much, Brooke, and to pass the baton to Ava Clarke for the PEF. So my name is Ava Clarke and I'm from the PEF and the PEF fully endorses the Bodding Museum statement on decolonization and supports their efforts in this regard. As a funding organization, we were very pleased to support the Bodding Museum's project to create an online exhibition to highlight the lives and work of the Arab workforce at the Tel El Nasweh Exhibitions, Excavations, and these online lectures exploring the contribution of the local population to the archaeology of Palestine. As another Western colonial era organization, our own history shares many of the same characteristics which have just been described and we are keen to play our part in this process, both as co-hosts of these lectures and with our own initiatives. And with that, it gives me great pleasure to actually introduce our speaker today, Dr. John Jack Green, Miami University Art Museum, whose topic is Archaeology, Community and Public Health at Palestine, insights from the Olga Tafnal Archive. Dr. Green is the Geoffrey Horrell and Rodney Rose Director and the Chief Curator of the Miami University Art Museum from 2021 to the present. He received his MA and PhD in Archaeology from University College London in 2001 and 2006. He has held curatorial and administrative positions at museums at the University of Oxford, University of Chicago and the Corning Museum of Glass. He most recently worked on cultural heritage initiatives, research and archival projects at the American Center of Research, Amman Jordan from 2017 to 21, including the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management Initiative in Petro. He's also engaged in the Tel-Essidia Cemetery in Jordan Publication Project with the British Museum. His co-edited open access book with Ross Henry, Olga Tafnal's Perfect Journey, Letters and Photographs of an Archaeologist in the Levant and Mediterranean from UCL Press, is based largely on archives housed at the Palestine Exploration Fund in London. So, over to you. Great. Thank you so much for the wonderful introductions. I assume you can all hear me OK. I'm now going to share my screen. Can you see that OK? Great. Thank you. I also wanted to, before I begin, I wanted to give an acknowledgement, a land acknowledgement from where I'm seated and where I'm speaking to you from. So I'm at the Miami University here in Oxford and we at the museum, at the Art Museum here, we respectfully acknowledge the Shawnee and Miami people who, along with other Indigenous groups, were the first stewards of the land that this University, Miami University and this museum now occupies. I also want to thank all of the people who've made this possible today, this this event and this whole series, un-silencing the archives. It's really an excellent opportunity to delve into archival research and to share some things that perhaps are not usually covered or not usually explored in, say, archaeological reports, but are extremely important for understanding the wider context. I want to thank Aaron and Felicity, Aaron Brody, the Bar Day Museum, Felicity Cobbing, of course, at the Palestine Exploration Fund, who I know can't join us sadly today. But at the same time, I want to say thank you to my co-author and editor of the book that this research can be found in. And that's Ross Henry, who's in the UK. And I hope Ross is listening in today and watching us. I hope she is. So hi, Ross. And thank you so much for all your work and help with this project in co-editing, co-introducing. And co-authoring the book. And there are so many other people to thank. And in this in this presentation, you'll see images from various archives that I'll be mentioning in a moment, of course, the Palestine Exploration Fund itself, which houses the Olga Tofnal archive. So let's just move on. So I'll be speaking today about Olga Tofnal's role as an archaeologist, British archaeologist, working in Palestine in the 20s and 30s, but also about this sort of less known aspect of her humanitarian work, particularly with local communities and in terms of health and public health. So that's one of the areas I'll be focusing on in particular. But first of all, who was Olga Tofnal, why is she important and perhaps why is she being overlooked? And I hope not overlooked too much longer. So first of all, Olga Tofnal is probably best known for her publication work in preparation of the volumes for the Teleth Dweyer or Lekish Lakish expedition. So this was a major archaeological project that was sponsored by the Henry Welcome and also Marston, who was a major sponsor as well. And it was a it was a considerable expedition with a major publication project. And Olga really saw through a lot of that publication. And so you can see the results of that work in those volumes like I'm showing here, the Fossey Temple, Iron Age and Bronze Age volumes, for example. Olga Tofnal came from a pretty wealthy privileged background, although she was not someone who really necessarily had a lot of actual money in her life, but she did she did come from this particular background. And she you can see her family home here. She's in this photograph in the center at the age of three in one of the motor cars, and that's the sort of family home there. And you can see as a as a young woman, she wasn't entirely sure where her career would take her. And it wasn't really until she had become engaged with the Petrie's as a young woman that she became involved in archaeology through her experience that led her to this really interesting, diverse career in archaeology towards becoming really a professional archaeologist. She was certainly someone who you could describe went from being, say, an amateur to a professional. She didn't have any formal academic qualifications, though. And that was something that you see quite a bit in those early years of archaeology. The archives that I'll be talking about, most of them come from the Palestine Exploration Fund itself, and they're the Olga Tofnal archive. And this consists largely of letters and also some photographs that were donated to the Palestine Exploration Fund through Heather Bell, who was the librarian at the Institute of Archaeology. And they're really important archive of showing some examples of those in a moment. But also there are other archives here, the Welcome Marston Archaeological Research Expedition Archive, which is at the British Museum, UCL, the Petrie Museum, so University College London, and also the Institute of Archaeology. There are also some archives I'll be briefly mentioning from the Welcome Trust and the Welcome Trust Collection, the Egypt Exploration Society, as well as the Starkey Family Archive, James Starkey being the director of that Teletheware expedition. And of course, I want to thank all of those people who have helped to get access to collections and archives to make this research possible. So this is just a couple of examples of some of the letters that are within the Olga Tofnal archive at the P.E.F. And so we've got handwritten letters as well as typed out letters. And this particular book project, which is published through UCL Press and is open access, the link is there so you can access this for free. It's a great resource. It's easy to search and find things just through a word search, for example, when you download the PDF. So it's a great resource for exploring history, archaeology, history of archaeology and so many different aspects, relationships with the local community, the workers, some details of archaeology, tourism and travel. There's just so many aspects here. So you'll see here some just examples of how this work is kind of important and interesting from the point of view of providing insights into the labor forces who worked on these archaeological projects in the early 20th century in Mandateira, Palestine. Some work has been done, of course, on some workers and some of the people who could be described as hidden hands. Or the Invisible Labor Force, a couple of books I want to raise here. The Hidden Hands by Stephen Quirk, which focuses on the Kufti workers who worked with Petri in Egypt. We can extend that relationship with the Kuftis to his work in Palestine, which has not necessarily been presented so much in in terms of scholarly research, but is beginning to be. And actually, I just want to point out some interesting article just published in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly by Eric Klein about the Kufti workers at Megiddo. So Kuftis describes the workers from Kuft in Egypt, and they came with Petri and other workers, specialised workers who came to work on archaeological projects in Palestine, also in Syria, in this period of time. Here we see a few pictures, a picture of some of the workers, the Kuftis, who came to Tel Al-Farah, south with the Petri expedition there and who Olga had worked with as well. Another recent book is those Why Those Who Shovel a Silent History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labour by Alison Mikkel, which puts all of this into a wider context. Why is it that we don't know too much about these workers and what's their role in projects? We should be doing more to highlight their names, their identities and their contributions to these archaeological discoveries. They're very important. Here's an image from the Olga Tufnil archive showing a group of workers who were working really very closely with Olga Tufnil at the site of Tel Ad-Dewir. This is from the 1930s, although it's completely it's not dated particularly, but we have the names of these people written in her photographic album, which we're now able to present and publish in here. So this kind of thing of finding out who these people are adds more to the story. These discoveries weren't just being made by Western archaeologists and experts. These discoveries were being shared with the local communities and there's a certain level of pride and importance to the history there that we need to acknowledge. One of the really interesting things and a lot of this actually is published in various places, but and also now in the new book is the sort of colonial attitudes of the time and also how they changed over time as well. I'm including a quote here and leads into the humanitarian aspect of the talk and that is Olga's own words, Olga Tufnil's own words when she visited the site of Tel Ad-Dewir, an ancient Lekesh or Lakhish in 1983. Towards the end of her life, you see a photograph of her here during that visit. She gave a lecture. This was the expedition then run by David Sishkin, Tel Aviv University, and it was in modern day Israel today. Olga writes, there was one good thing, perhaps this is reminiscing about the time. There was one good thing about that system and employing the locals who were then in very poor way and had a very tiny living standard. It was lovely to see during the time that they were working for us. How the small skinny boys and the pale girls who worked as our basket children grew and flourished and their faces filled out. That was something I feel was a real contribution to this part of the world. It's worth noting here that this was in the previous era, in the 30s, local people in these reports were often referred to as natives. And so we see here really employing the locals as a kind of substitute to that. But that idea of a kind of that these archaeological projects were doing good. They were benevolent. They provided resources, provided employment to the local population whether they were the Bedouin population who came to work more seasonally and move through that area or the local fellow heen, the the the settled villages there who also worked on these projects. But this idea that there was this positive aspect in terms of employment that would lead to improved living conditions and generally raise the standards for those people. That was a very kind of it's a very kind of colonialist sort of viewpoint, but also one that you could argue is sort of paternalist and viewpoint or maternalist in this case, with Olga Tafnel herself. But that idea that people were there and they were helping these local people to have a better life. So where does that kind of idea come from? That idea of archaeological projects and getting involved with humanitarian issues and concerns. Well, Olga's role as a Petrie's pup, Petrie pup. So that means she was one of the people who kind of came under the wing of Flinda's Petrie, you can see in this image on the on the left. And became sort of one of his proponents, as it were, on the projects that they worked together on. But also the role of Hilda Petrie, Flinda's Petrie's wife, who was an important archaeologist, Egyptologist in her own right. But also she was a sponsor of medical charities in the First World War. She was you can read about this in Debbie Chalice's fairly recent blog talking about her support of Dr. Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women's Hospital and generally nursing in that First World War period. And if it wasn't for Hilda Petrie, Olga would not have got into archaeology because Hilda Petrie was a good friend of Olga Tufnall's mother, Blanche Tufnall. And that's probably how they got introduced to each other, too. They were Blanche was also and Olga herself were great supporters of Czechoslovakia and and also Eastern Europe in terms of the beginnings of those countries and helping out in various ways. So they were kind of activists and and charitable doing good things, working for charities and also with suffragist movements as well. So there's that wider context there. Also, working with Petrie, the Petrie's in the Gaza region with Tel El-Ajul is a really good example. And Rachel Sparks has written about this in her publication publicizing Petrie about financing field work. The digging of these canals, which was actually paid for through the expedition, but through subscription. So the mandate government at that time had been all set to start digging canals and clearing that region of malaria, so digging the canals so the winter rains can flush through and get rid of the malaria mosquitoes. But that wasn't forthcoming. So Petrie took on himself to make sure this land was good for the archaeologists, but also the local population and actually make a point of this in that publicity. Hospitals and necessity archaeology hobby. What they're arguing here is that you actually are contributing to public health improvements by supporting this archaeological dig so we can get rid of the malaria. So he's a really good example of that intersection. Malaria was a real concern for the archaeologists. So this photograph here showing the team members from going back to a jewel and Tel El Farah South. You see here James Starkey, who's here in the very smart suit, second from right in the left photograph and also Harding on the right, who's dressed in sort of Arab gear. Both of them really suffered from malaria and that that's clear in the letters from Olga or Toughnell, that they were suffering from malaria, but it was also a widespread issue. So treatment for malaria with quinine, but also getting rid of the source of of the malaria itself was a very high concern. During the work at Tel El Farah South, this was really in 1928, 1929. There is mention, Olga Toughnell mentions for the first time in her in an interview later in her life. It's not mentioned in the letters that she started a clinic at the site treating the workers for malaria using quinine. And although we don't have I don't have any other sources that show that there's no reason to suggest that might not have been the case. But we don't have any other data to suggest that. So I'm not going to dwell on that, but just show that the beginnings of that really seem to be at Tel El Farah South with Olga taking a role in that treatment of people with malaria. And it wasn't really until the work at Tel El Adjoul, particularly in 1930 to early 32, where we've got more intensive work with the clinics and the humanitarian aspect and Olga taking a lead role in that. So in addition, you've got the major discoveries like the equid burials and the Bronze Age city that's being discovered. But also there's this aspect of the humanitarianism. And this is really interesting because there was a retired biology professor by the name of Dr. Sperrin Johnson, who was actually based in New Zealand at that time, but originally had come, I think, was also connected with university in in Ireland. And he was actually brought in by Flinders Petrie to come in and measure skulls. So basically, this is the eugenics theory and the idea of you can find out races of people from their skulls and then make determinations about civilization and progress. Of course, it's widely discredited, of course, now, but that's what he was there to do. But in the meantime, he also helped. They ran a clinic together, Tufnil and Sperrin Johnson during the 31 to 32 season and Olga Tufnil writes in her letter that she reports seeing over 100 patients a week. This would have been various things that they were treating. But I think malaria being a key one, but not only that aspect. So it gives you a sense of the scale here. But it wasn't really until Teller De Weir and that expedition to also known as ancient Laquiche or Laikish in 1932 to 1938. So this was a really much big, much larger scale expedition with more resources and sponsorship. You see in this photograph, Olga is in the background. And in a way, she often spends a lot of time in the background in photographs. So her voice is kind of hidden in a lot of these things. But actually through the letters, she's able to kind of express what she's writing to her mother, she's telling her about what's going on. So we get a sense of her activities. But otherwise, we really wouldn't know much about her key role here. They were really busy all the time and all these expeditions, working all hours, getting up at dawn, going out to dig, coming back, eating, then getting into sort of pottery, registration and in addition to that, doing running a clinic. So this is where we start talking about the so-called Eye Hospital. And this has been written about before in previous articles. But here we're able to flesh it out a little bit more. So the name of this clinic has got various names. Sometimes it's referred to as the clinic, sometimes the Arabic name Iyada and sometimes the dispensary is another term and sometimes Olga's Eye Hospital. So that really refers to the importance of eye diseases at this time and particularly the treatment of trachoma and conjunctivitis. And I'm not going to show you pictures of what that involves, but basically it's a kind of infection that can lead to blindness. If it's not treated, it causes swellings under the eyes, eyelids causes the eyelashes to grow in on themselves. Then you have the issue of those eyelashes and causing scratches to the cornea. And that leads eventually to blindness if it's untreated. It can be easily treated. It's one and at this time in Palestine, blindness and eye diseases were one of the highest, most important goals to be tackled in terms of public health, particularly in rural areas, but all over Palestine. And so this was a big focus for some of the medical charities and organizations and the mandate health areas to try to tackle. But of course, they couldn't tackle all these areas, particularly rather remote rural areas. And this is where the eye clinic comes in or the eye hospital is that it filled a gap and that really provided resources for both Bedouin communities who are coming from far, far our field, including as far away as Beersheba in in 40 kilometers away, people walking that distance to get treatment, but also within the local community, the people living and working near the site. So this was a really important resource. And you can see some of the people involved. He's got she's got children who are helping her measuring liquids and and presumably helping her to dispense the treatment to. We don't know the names of those individuals, but I wanted to say that they're important. They should be acknowledged as they helped out a lot. Interestingly, there's a connection here, although not necessarily a direct connection, but I think it's interesting and worth pointing out that Sir Henry Welcome, who was the co-founder of the pharmaceutical company, borrows Welcome and Company in 1880, was one of the main sponsors of the expedition, the Welcome Archaeological Research Expedition to the Near East. And they did provide resources to with medical expenses. So they were aware of this. And I think that was a sort of tie in in terms of the idea of providing medical treatment, although it wasn't necessarily the main mission of the expedition. It was certainly something seen that could be of benefit to the local community as well. But interestingly, this quote in one of the reports they're using obviously language that was in use at the time. And I wouldn't suggest this language is applicable today. But they're saying that the the reputation of the expedition stands in the native mind for for health, as well as for regular employment. So this idea that this is not just about employing local people, but it's also about providing health and resources towards health. And that was seen as again, this idea of sort of benevolence and the idea is in a way it ties in very well with the idea of colonial medicine and we'll talk a bit about that a bit later on. So what is this dispensary exactly and what did it contain? Well, it really seemed that there was very it was it was pretty basic. As you can see in this photograph, you can see all the medical items up on the top shelf sort of far out of reach. But it includes things like epsom salts and cod liver oil and things like that. But other kinds of treatments for eye diseases are also mentioned in the letters. And we also see in Olga Tovno's room, if you look at her bookcase, she's got ophthalmic science and practice as part of her bedtime reading. So that's another aspect there. Sometimes she was really involved and wanted to be get learn, gain more knowledge. But she didn't have expertise or training. She had to go and find that. So. So she did so. She took a course with Dr. Stratham, Dr. John Stratham of the Order of Saint John in Jerusalem in the hospital there. And she mentioned in one letter that she spent five days or so so far, and she's seen lots of different cases of diseases and learn how to treat the most common diseases more scientifically than she previously knew. So this was in December 32. She's really starting the season at Tell of the Ware, but really serious about making this an important part of the project. You can see Saint John's Hospital, Saint John Eye Hospital, which is in the left side of this this color photograph here, this postcard. And it's still going today, but known as Saint John Eye Hospital group. So it's still an active charity today in the Palestinian territories. Let's move on to the next slide. OK, and here we see some other interesting letters. She writes actually to Dr. John Stratham and this includes mention of the fact that she is seeing. She's consulting with him, giving corrections, getting notes, seeing between 30 and 40 people a day, which is a lot of people. Not sure if that's an over exaggeration or if it's it's really accurate was it every day? We don't really know. But a large proportion of them are eye cases. She also writes that someone saw her in in the hospital in a white coat. So assume that she had this sort of additional medical experience or qualification that she doesn't necessarily have. But she does impress on them the importance of going up to the eye hospital and offering them notes to them when they do go. So she notes the bad cases in the village with heavy discharge, particularly with the children and then really interesting. She talks about trachoma in children and the types of treatment asking about the very young children ages between two and seven years old and the kinds of treatment. So she's consulting on this, what kind of medicine, boratic or protagal, which is safe. We have no idea if these treatments were effective. We don't have any reports that I'm aware of that indicate that. But we know that a large number of people would have been treated. Another really interesting aspect here is the location of the clinic. So in this red square here, you can see on the right hand side of the square was where Olga's room was on the dig. But also to the left in just in the corner there is the clinic. But also all the big project people are living here around it. Starkey is on the left side. We've got Harding as well, various other people. So this is really the living area. It's not clear exactly whether this was the location of the clinic for the entire duration. But this is based on the memory of John Starkey, who was the son of James Starkey, who's still living and provided his childhood memory of where things were. And they kind of match up with the photographs as well. So there's no reason to doubt that. But people would have come into the inner courtyard from outside and come into this space. You can imagine there might have been lines of people here. And this is just a picture just showing a party that took place at the in the courtyard. But it shows the workers and local people who were there in that. And this was completely different to, say, the Petrie model where they have been in a courtyard in the Petrie expeditions, but they wouldn't really let local people into that space from outside. So we saw a sort of opening up to the community here and really providing that kind of access. It was in a way also a kind of way to show that they really did care and they wanted to have that degree of openness, I believe so, at least in terms of the visibility of that. But there's no photographs, which is really interesting. And that only makes me assume unless there are other photographs that are out there in the archives, I haven't found. Must be that there was a deliberate reason why photographs were not being taken. Even the earlier photograph showing Olga administering eyedrops into the man seated, it's taken unawares. You can tell that she was not posing for that photograph. So I think that gives you a clue as to the respect that there was for the local people. There's another aspect of health that's interesting. Again, Olga didn't have any formal medical training, but she often took on the role as being a kind of specialist. She had access to medical supplies, but also some rudimentary knowledge. And so she kind of played a sort of nursing role in a way. And of course, people in the village would come to her for this is the village of Kabeba, by the way, come to her for help, particularly also with maternity needs. So she writes in October 1933 that she went across the village to see the famous twins born a few weeks ago. And she says that this time last year I was attending the first child of Hamid and his wife, trying despite myself to save it from an inevitable grave and then saying that the parents certainly wasted much time as the twins already lost strong and lusty individuals. So we see how she is playing a role with these women and families and particularly to do a childbirth and also getting called out for an emergency midwifery call because someone had been in labor for 15 hours, but she just shows up and then the baby is born. So she's kind of got this sort of talismanic quality here that enables things to move in positive directions as well. So that's one insight. Sort of getting close to wrapping up now, but I just wanted to give a bit of a sense of the wider context of colonial medicine in mandate era Palestine. It's an emerging topic and it's a very hot topic, of course, with public health and humanitarianism. But there are a few interesting articles here, for example, Bedouin Health Services mandated Palestine by Abu Rabia, which provides us with the context of both. You could argue sort of resistance to colonial medicine or new medicine, as well as acceptance of it and access to it, differential access. That's a really interesting article also relates to the regions that we're talking about for Tel Aviv, South and to some extent, Tel Aviv as well. Philip Beaumand's work on epidemiology in the city is something that is interesting and worth a look at from ordinary Jerusalem. And I was also point out Julia Schatz's work on governing Jerusalem's children, revealing invisible inhabitants, looking at the American Colony Aid Association. Excuse me. And I think that that's kind of interesting from the point of view of whether this kind of humanitarianism is it in concert with the state in service of the state or are these sort of NGOs and organizations, these early NGOs or charities, they are serving an important role, but in a way the mandate authorities don't have the resources to cover all these areas. So they allow these charities and organizations to do the work that they would normally be doing. But interestingly, the impact that has is you end up with a kind of divided healthcare system because you have healthcare services sometimes often being divided up by on religious or ethnic lines or no, for example, the initiation of Jewish charities or charities that are focused on Arab populations so that you end up actually creating potentially a less integrated into communal and non-communal health system. So that's one sort of unintended or perhaps intended consequence. But I think others here are more expert in judging that and you can read about their work here. But just in summary, I just wanna say that I think that Olga, I was thinking about who was an influence here on her to set up the clinics was it Sparen Johnson was held a Petrie of force here in leading her towards this clinic? Was it welcome himself? Was it this idea that welcome organization company was helping out as well? I think that's all of those things. But I think that Olga herself deserves credit as the driving force for this. She used the available resources. She had influence from others but this was for mutual benefit to the archeological projects in the local communities. And she certainly did not boast about it. She was very modest and that's the reason why we don't know much about this except for now we're beginning to tease this out from the archives. What's interesting is this informal public health role of archeological projects. What role does that play in the study of colonial medicine? I believe that there are other projects that also did this, but we just don't know about them very much. And I'd be really interested in hearing about those. If anyone knows of any other archeological projects that have that kind of role whether informally or formally in filling a gap in terms of medical treatment. And then going back to that whole topic of the role of these kinds of organizations formal informal in filling the gap, humanitarian governance. That's kind of in a way, one of the terms that Schatz uses and it relates to the provision of social welfare in concert with the state. So not necessarily directly from the state but in concert with. And I wonder if this could be thought of in that term, in those terms. Or is it outside of that realm? So that's an open question there. But I do think that it'll be interesting to explore that whole issues I mentioned about other archeological projects. So interesting to hear your thoughts on that. And then lastly, just to sort of bring things to today because we talked about the employment aspect and the benevolence of kind of archeological projects coming in and providing work and pay and employment to local workforces too. And that's actually a kind of ongoing theme. And I think we talk about development and the role of international development today in terms of archeological field work and cultural heritage preservation. This is very much also from my own experience working in Jordan and seeing the work and then getting involved in projects like the Temple of the Wing Lions CRM initiative. Is that international development plays a key role in funding initiatives focused on things like tourism development, but ultimately is also projects that help to build jobs and experience and know-how. And that helps local communities. That helps local communities to understand the importance of heritage but also provides wages and also job opportunities in the future. And so that employment aspect I think is something that kind of runs through and perhaps we should be thinking of this as a kind of continuum of kind of this idea of humanitarianism connecting into archeology in terms of a colonial as well as a post-colonial setting. So I just wanna throw that out there for discussion and debate. And I wanna thank all of the people who've made the research possible on this book, which you can't see, but here it is. And all of the people who made this archival research possible. So thank you very much. Thank you so much for your fascinating talk. The amount of work it must have taken to do a full-scale excavation and run a public health program is incredible. You mentioned that the Petrie's and Olga Toughnell were not necessarily unique in their focus on public health through archeology. Do you think it's possible to see a larger trend with other archeologists at the time doing the same? Well, that's my question. I would like to put that out there if people know of examples. I'm only guessing because obviously there would be most projects would have someone who was involved in dispensing medicine or in charge of medical supplies. They might have a nurse or a doctor on the team or someone with some rudimentary training or access to a local doctor. If they're in remote locations, they're obviously gonna have medical supplies and people locally who don't have access to those are wanting to get access to them as well. And stands to reason that you would want to provide those resources to the workers as well for their safety, for their wellbeing and to help them, especially their injuries or illnesses. So I think that it must have been fairly common but it was being not necessarily recorded in a way that would be visible to us. It might be in the archives. And that's the question. I think that this may be more common. And I was thinking about Jebel Moya in Sudan which was one of the projects that Wellcome self was involved with as a sponsor. And that particular project, there were kind of accusations in the earlier stages of mistreatment of workers. And then there was a big goal towards increasing the number of workers and providing clear, visible examples of good treatment of the workers. And that was important to the archeologists at that time too. So I think it was common just we don't know so much about it but happy to hear any thoughts or feedback on that. So we have a question sort of on the balance of archeology and public health. Someone would like you to, wonders if you could speculate a bit about sort of how much time Tafnel spent excavating versus working in the clinics in a typical season. Yeah, that's a bit of a mystery. I have to be honest. I don't know. I can only assume that they would have had set hours or days where the clinic would have been open especially if you've got people coming from miles around. And so yeah, I don't think it was something you could just drop in of course in an emergency. I think that that was always possible in terms of the time. I know that they worked in the field pretty much certainly for six to eight hours a day. I would say I'm not sure exactly but they started very early in the mornings and they would be working on fines and so forth. So I imagine it would have been an afternoon activity but no idea if there was specific day and so forth but she mentions so many people a day which implies that it was multiple days in a week that this was going on but say I don't have that information. Do you know if they're working in the field and also working in the clinic, do you know if the public health project was run seasonally? If so, what did the workers do in the interim between field seasons for either employment or medical treatments? Yeah, that's a really great question. And so August often was there for pretty much half the year. They would arrive typically in any time between October excuse me, and December to start the season. Obviously depended on the when Ramadan was as well and then they would work through often to April or May. And so in the summer, in the summertime to early fall, they would not have been there. Now there were guards and there were people there. I don't know if anyone would have had access to the medical supplies, but it's a really good question. My feeling is it may not have been full access. Obviously, wouldn't have been able to access Olga Taflan's own knowledge, but she had those assistants as well. So I'm not sure if they played a role. Is there any any indication in the archives, some of her assistants, were they paid fair living wages for their sort of labor in the in the program? Do you know if they often rehired the same assistance season after season? Yeah, I mean, we don't know about the the assistants who helped out with the clinic. But I imagine they would have been paid a little bit towards that they probably would have already been existing workers, probably working on the basket. So they didn't buy children and women as well as men. And they I think that it's something it's it's probably about half of what one of the adults would have been paid. I'm sorry, I don't have the specific figure to hand, but I'm assuming they would have been paid. But I don't have any data on that for the for the clinic itself. But certainly for the baskets working in the field, clearing baskets and sieving, they would have been paid. So we have another question about the logistics. You may have answered this already. Did the was it the archaeologists themselves who were running the clinic or did they bring in other team members during the excavation of field season? Who were there to focus solely on the the clinic? It really just seems to be Augusta for herself. That's my impression and her assistants, who were the probably the children who are mentioned and who are shown in the photographs. I do not know of mention, apart from in Tella the Jewel, when she is running the clinic with Dr. Sperron Johnson. I don't have any other information about anyone who substituted for her or ran the clinic in her absence or with her. It may have been that she had help, but I don't have any record of that. So you mentioned in terms of sponsorship, the the wellness company provided some sort of support. But do you know to what extent government support was available for these types of projects or for all this project and specifically? As far as I know, there was there was no government support. In my view, I think that it's possible they may have had some of the medical supplies could have come via the eye hospital. Maybe I do know that the expedition sent a donation to the eye hospital for five pounds in one season, because that's a receipt in one of August letters. And they want one of August letters. That might have been just simply in kind for in kind support, perhaps for the training or just as a recognition of their of their assistance. I think that the reason why there wasn't any there wasn't this level of medical support. In a way, that was the reason for it being there. The clinic is that it provided it filled a gap and. In terms of the resources, there are there are some accounts that are in the Welcome Trust collection that include medical expenses. I haven't seen anything itemized yet, but we're talking about anything between twenty four and thirty four pounds in a season, which it's quite a bit, if you think about it, but that could include medical expenses for the team members like going to hospital. So it's not clear to me how much of that was for the specific supplies. But I'm pretty sure that it was done voluntary basis on a shoestring with very limited resources and with fairly inexpensive medical supplies. So I feel it was done in in in an inexpensive way, but on a slightly larger scale, as we saw in terms of the number of people who could be treated. Yes, you mentioned that at one point they were seeing about 30 to 40 people per day. Do you know what or is it possible to know was the knowledge of the clinic spread by word of mouth? Do we know do we have any idea sort of how large the clinic grew or the the number of patients throughout its duration, you know, specifically for scale? Like how many people lived in the the local village? That's a really good question, I think, for the local village. I think you've got about six hundred households or so. I believe in Cabeba. It's hard. I have to go back and check that. It's a it's a it's a larger village. It's a medium sort of size village, I think. But then I think that many of the people coming also Bedouin population who are working there have come perhaps from other places to settle there for the work. And that's that could be one of the reasons why word of mouth spread quite a bit. Among particularly the Bedouin communities, who some of whom are coming from the Gaza region because they were working and they're working there with the projects before and a jewel and in in Tel Aviv, South as well, and they often came for the additional work at Tel Aviv as well later on. So I think that through those networks, there must have been a lot of word of mouth. I don't think there was any need to advertise this in other ways. But yeah, I think word of mouth is probably the main main thing. So someone's noted there's this interesting tension between sort of a colonial colonialist presence of Western archaeologists and this actual help that's given to locals that the clinic provided. Could you give your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a really good question. So the tension, I guess that existed. I guess that I think that we when we look at read some of the articles that have been written about these public health issues in Mandate period, particularly Abu-Rabbiya and some other articles as well. There is a tension that exists between the emergence of globalised medicine and new medicine alongside traditional medicine. You know, you've got to think about this from the point of view of if there are traditional methods and then you're bringing in something that is going to sort of supersede that tradition. And I know that there is an ongoing research that's being done on that tension between those traditions and the new medicines coming in in Hebron. For example, I know that there are smallpox vaccinations that were being proposed and actually instituted. And then there was resistance to that as well and fear and also concern about what that might bring for the local populations. And you talk about anti-vaccination sort of ideas. That was also something that was happening then, too. That there wasn't any vaccination as far as I know going on through this clinic. So it was fairly benign in terms of the eye treatments and perhaps quinine and things that were not too heavy duty in terms of treatments. So I think that it was generally seen as a benevolent thing. I think later on when we have something I didn't mention is the murder of. James Starkey in 1938, the director of the expedition, he was murdered by in the terms of the time, the brigands, but they were basically sort of involved with the in the Arab revolt. And that was something that was really shocking at the time, of course, and led to the end of the expedition. There's been some discussion and debate about whether that was a deliberate thing that were targeted because of some land dispute to do with the Teleduware location. And this was a revenge killing, effectively, or if it was just simply in this case of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I think that the argument to say that the local people were really found that an overall benefit with this medical clinic is something that's in favour of this being that people when these people, the people in the dig were friends of the local people. And they this was not just a show. This was a real a real feeling of of friendship and collaboration. This wasn't just in a real relationship, but there were tensions. There were tensions that existed between the Western British dig team and the local populations. But those were happening probably at a sort of higher level involving these issues like land disputes. But I do think that I think the general the clinic would have been viewed as being a positive thing. It looks like we have one more question. You spoke a bit about the order of Saint John and Jerusalem. And you mentioned that Olga received some of her training, specifically for high disease. Do you know where she sort of picked up other skills for, you know, for example, for like women's health or midwifery? Was it all through? Did you take multiple courses through the order of Saint John or were some of the skills she had from earlier in life? So I think I'm assuming that the eye hospital training was was purely on eye diseases and any other kind of medical experience would have been gained sort of through reading and through consulting doctors when she could. And anyone I think that she she may have learned quite a bit on the go. And I think just having that experience could have led to her having knowledge, but. As I said, I don't think she had formal training. It's possible she could have had other training back in the UK when she was visiting. So for the rest of the time of the year, it's possible. And this is not recorded in the letters because she was writing home to her mother. So all the letters are pretty much from the time of the day. So we're just missing chunks of time. So we don't we just simply don't know at the moment. Thank you very much. This is fascinating. Thank you. So I think that brings us to a close for this presentation today. I would like to thank Dr. Jack Green on behalf of all of our co-sponsors and also the Internet audience. And we look forward to actually two lectures in this series in April. So stay tuned for further details about the continuation of the series. But again, a big thank you to Jack. Fascinating talk today and really revealing, you know, aspects of earlier archaeology. And as he drew out so nicely that tie into, you know, some more current trends in terms of outreach to local groups and benefits to local groups, something that clearly was taking place despite colonial imprint, but was not written about. And so diving into these archives just furthers our understandings of those kinds of interactions. And so a big shout out to him. Check out his book and just big round of thanks to all of our co-sponsors and to our presenter today. So thank you very much. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful. We really appreciate it.