Jacquetta Hawkes

Jacquetta Hawkes (5 August 1910 – 18 March 1996) was a British archaeologist.

Born Jessie Jacquetta Hopkins, the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, she married first Christopher Hawkes, then an Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, in 1933. From 1953, she was married to J.B. Priestley. She is perhaps best known generally for her book "A Land" (1951). She was a prolific writer on subjects quite removed from her principal field. She was above all interested in discovering the lives of the peoples revealed by scientific excavations. With her first husband, Christopher Hawkes, she co-authored "Prehistoric Britain" (1943) and with J.B. Priestley she wrote "Dragon's Mouth" (1952) and "Journey Down a Rainbow" (1955). Her other works include "The World of the Past" (1963), "Prehistory (History of Mankind: Cultural and Scientific Development, Volume 1 Part 1)" (1963) prepared under the auspices of UNESCO, and "The Shell Guide to British Archaeology" (1986).

Research into Minoan Civilization

In her general work on the Minoans ("Dawn of the Gods", 1968), Hawkes was one of the first to suggest that the ancient Minoans might have been ruled by women. She noted that very little if any evidence of a Minoan male ruler exists, whereas abundant evidence of such rulers existed among the Egyptians, Hittites, Sumerians and other Minoan contemporaries. Furthermore, images of strong and powerful women abound in Minoan art. Hawkes said, "The absence of these manifestations of the all-powerful male ruler that are so widespread at this time and in this stage of cultural development as to be almost universal, is one of the reasons for supposing that the occupants of Minoan thrones may have been queens" ("Dawn of the Gods", page 76).

Archaeological excavations and papers

*1956 The Longstone, Mottistone, Isle of Wight, England.

References

Finn, C. (2005). Jacquetta and the Artists. "British Archaeology" 80: 24-27.

[http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/special/hawkes.php]