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 Garstang began his academic career in mathematics at Jesus, College,
Oxford, but while still an undergraduate turned his attention to
archaeology. His first
fieldwork was done in Egypt, where, at the age of twenty-three, he joined Flinders Petrie. He then
worked in Anatolia (1904-1909), returning for a final season of
excavations at Sakçagözü in 1911.
His influential work, The Land of the Hittites, was published in
1910. At the age of 26, he was appointed honorary reader in Egyptian
archaeology at Liverpool University.
Five years later (in 1907) he beacame professor of the methods and
practice of archaeology, a post he held until his retirement in 1941.
From 1909 until 1914 he excavated in the Sudan, at Meroë, capital
of an ancient Nubian kingdom.
Garstang was the founding Director of the British School of
Archaeology in Jerusalem (now
the Kenyon Institute) in 1920. In
that same year, he made what is probably his most lasting contribution to
archaeology by becoming the founding Director of the British Mandatory
Department of Antiquities of Palestine, a post he held until 1926.
In that capacity he drafted the country's antiquities laws, which
were notably liberal, enlightened, and practical.
Garstang used the material belonging to the Ottoman Palestine
Museum as the basis of the collection for the Palestine Museum in
Jerusalem, now the Rockefeller Museum. He carried out the first post-World War I excavations in
Palestine at Ashkelon, followed by a series of soundings at sites across
the country. In 1922, at a
historic meeting with W. F. Albright of the American School of
Oriental Research in Jerusalem and L-H Vincent of the École
Biblique et Archéologique Française, Garstang formulated the terminology
still used for the classification of the archaeological material of the
southern Levant. From 1930 to 1936 he carried out a major excavation at
Jericho, funded by Sir Charles Marston.
Although this excavation was poorly published, and although
Garstang's views of Jericho regarding the accounts in Exodus and regarding
the Israelite conquest are no longer accepted, his work there provided the
first information about the existence of an aceramic Neolithic culture.
Following World War II, Garstang returned to
Anatolia, where he became the founding Director of the British Institute
of Archaeology at Ankara (1947). His
final excavation was at the site of Mersin, in Cilicia, where he
discovered important remains of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Two days before his death, though very ill and weak, he was
able to realise his wish to revisit this site, coming ashore from the boat
on which he was enjoying a last cruise.
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