Incredibly grateful to Landmark Trust for the opportunity for all four of us to come together in iconic #TrowelBlazers territory, Mary Anning’s Lyme Regis, to reflect on the last 13 years and figure out the next ;)

Photo of three women in front of an information panel at the Natural History Museum, about Mary Anning. They women are all smiling at the camera and look a lot younger than they do now.

Photo of a box containing Fossil Hunter Lottie action figure, a child-proportioned doll. She is wearing practical outdoor clothing. The box is decorated with palaeontology themes and has an image of Mary Anning mentioning that it contains collector cards about her.

Screenshot of a Twitter post from 2015 from Lottie Dolls showing a girl called Lily standing in the Lyme Regis Museum next to a giant ammonite, holding a Lottie Doll. The girl is smiling. The text includes the tag #GirlsDigScience.

Photographic portait of Laura Steele posing as Mary Anning, against a dark green background. She is standing sideways, leaning over towards a spaniel dog. She is wearing a top hat and in her hand is a hammer. Copyright for image: Leonora Saunders; used with permission.

We've long been keen on #MaryAnning (e.g. part-inspiration for Fossil Hunter Lottie action figure, & featured in our #RaisingHorizons exhibition). We know how inspiring and powerful her story as an individual is.
But we're interested in seeing #trowelblazers not as anomalies, but as nodes...

It’s simple to suggest additional women whose biographies could be added to this database - I just proposed pioneering #archaeologist Tessa Verney Wheeler. #TrowelBlazers

No sign of Mortimer Wheeler in this photo (maybe he took it himself?) but that’s almost certainly Tessa Verney Wheeler at the top right. #TrowelBlazers #archaeology

🏺 Rachel and Anne have tirelessly (and often thanklessly and entirely without financial support) produced yet more vital work on the state of professional experience for #trowelblazers

If I'd been able to go (😭), Tori, Emma & I would be channeling this exact #trowelblazers vibe right now: L - Germaine Henri-Martin, R - Dorothy Garrod, C - Suzanne de Saint-Mathurin (from whose archive this photo comes, & within which Garrod's archive was found, only in the 1990s!)
#ExcavatingGarrod

(being kept company on my bed by this sweet fool, but would much rather be reading 1930s field diaries and drinking a glass of crisp white in honour of DG and all other #trowelblazers)

Brings a whole new meaning to #trowelblazers...

Black-and-white aerial photograph of ancient and modern cultivation and irrigation features in Egypt's Western Desert.

#Trowelblazers Lady Mary Bailey and Gertrude Caton-Thompson may have been inspired by her, performing the first archaeological survey of Egypt with a plane, likely becoming the first women to take aerial photos for #archaeology! 🏺

🔗 from 1931 (£) doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Yusra Like many a woman before and since, **Yusra** had a dream: to go up to Cambridge, and become a fellow at Newnham College. But Yusra wasn’t your average dreamer. This was the woman who, in 1932, discovered the skull of a female Neandertal – the famous specimen Tabun 1 – in et-Tabun Cave on Mount Carmel. Yusra was one of the many women from the villages of Ljsim and Jeba in the Wady el-Mughara region of Palestine who became part of Dorothy Garrod’s excavation team. Yusra was the most expert, her work deeply valued by Garrod. She stayed with the project through its full six-years, acting as excavation fore(wo)man – her trained eyes alert to stone tool and bone fragments. Excavating at et-Tabun, alongside Jacquetta Hawkes, Yusra spotted a tooth. That tooth led to a crushed skull – one of the most important human fossils ever found. Discoveries like hers are a once-in-a-career (and often career-making) event for a palaeontologist – just thinking about it makes my heart race. Despite this, Yusra never made it to Cambridge. History intervened. ~~Ljsim~~ Ijzim and ~~Jeba~~ Jaba were depopulated* following Operation Shoter in 1948, and – as of 2010 – the Palestinian component of Garrod’s team untraceable. I haven’t even been able to discover her surname. But Yusra’s legacy lives on in the fine work that she did, and – thanks to the remarkable re-discovery of Dorothy Garrod’s archive – now her memory does too. Yusra – I raise my trowel to you. —- Post-Script: That we know anything at all about Yusra’s trowelblazing activities is owing to the work of people like Pamela Jane Smith, Jane Callander, Elizabeth Edwards and archivists in the Pitt Rivers Museum and MAN, Paris. All of the above is based on PJS’s original research. Post-script 2: The original article was based on PJS’ research, but following comments on io9.com (see here), I’ve updated the post to give the correct spellings for the villages & changed ‘destroyed’ to ‘depopulated’. Both villages were attacked and shelled during Operation Shoter, but many of Ijzim buildings went on to be used by new immigrants post-1948. [I’ve kept the original spellings in place to help anyone following an internet paper trail, as suspect these spelling may reflect transliteration of original texts/early 20thC pubs] Written & posted by Tori _Yusra (left) with Dorothy Garrod (right) at Mount Carmel in 1934.__Image 1998.294.52, reproduced here with permission from theDorothy Garrod Archive, Pitt Rivers Museum. All rights reserved._

A story here from #trowelblazers on the #Palestinian woman #Yusra working with #archaeologist Dorothy #Garrod at Mount Carmel in the 1930s. She found the #Tabun1 female #Neanderthal

trowelblazers.com/2014/05/08/yusra-expert-...

Some of the early female students at Cambridge University who were studying geology. Pictured from top left - Elizabeth Dale, Gertrude Elles, Louise Hugon, Agnes Robertson, Louisa Jebb, Helen Drew, Ida Slater, Margaret MacPhee, Kathleen Haddon, Phylis Jewson, Alice Dale, and Alice Buxton Taylor.

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science! ⚗️🔭🧪🔬👩‍🔬#IDWGS #IDWGD2025 #WomeninSTEM #HisSci #HistSTEM #Trailblazers #Trowelblazers #ExploreYourArchive

Photograph in black and white showing a group of people in a field standing and sitting by an excavation trench; some of the people working seem to be women. In the trenches are late prehistoric terracotta figures, partially excavated, standing upright.

Photograph in black and white looking at excavated assemblage of votive terracotta figurines, of many sizes and forms, from humanoid to animals

#Trowelblazers working in 1929/early 1930s at the excavations of the prehistoric sanctuary Agia Eirini, Cyprus
(also WHAT a site!!) 🏺

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agia_Ei...

Excavation of a Mousterian Rock Shelter at Devil's Tower, Gibraltar

Grading term papers today, really enjoying semi-biographical papers on Dorothy Garrod and Alison Brooks! Is
#trowelblazers over here on bsky yet? 🏺 🦣 www.google.com/books/editio...

Audrey Williams - Trowelblazers "My thoughts and respect go out to Professor Grimes…, and to Audrey Williams, his unsung assistant in 1954 without whom he simply would not have been able to achieve as much as he did.” That is John S...

More on Audrey here via #Trowelblazers by my colleague Jessica Bryan who supervises in the City and is on site today in fact (without cigarettes!).

trowelblazers.com/2015/01/21/a...

Thank you Rebecca! I look forward to learning more about your new project too. Was browsing the #Trowelblazers website, the sheer amount of amazing women archaeologists you gathered was just impressive! Let me know if I can help with anything.

Adore this research & thread, and especially ❤️ this post about interesting, unexpected women in archives: highly relevant to exciting new #Trowelblazers -related project which am really hoping to start soon...

Die Autorin thematisiert im Vorwort selbst, warum in dem Buch, das sich frühen Entdeckungen widmet, keine Frauen vorkommen, und dass es sie aber gab.
#MansWorld #Trowelblazers

#TrowelBlazers: Im #Wissenschaftsjahr-Gastbeitrag berichten @ElsbethBoesl und @archaeologiskop über "#Archäologinnen und ihre Geschichte(n)" aus der Anfangszeit des Fachs - und wie das @AktArcha-Projekt deren Pionierleistung sichtbarer machen...

Echoes of stone crafting | mappalab

ROUND TABLE!
25-26 March 2021 'Echoes of stone crafting' brought to you by a team of #trowelblazers
The archaeological study of quarries and rock-cut sites.
Join us in Pisa (virtually, obvs), live-stream on Youtube and Facebook.
http://ow.ly/Eggu50DIthc

@EnglishHeritage Ta! This thread is also a reminder for those of us interested in #trowelblazers to get nominating...

Brilliant! What a beautiful hommage to pioneering #trowelblazers. Great artwork, Alison!

Awesome project, fabulous video to tell you all about it! I've donated, you can too! #trowelblazers @trowelblazers www.indiegogo.com/projects/raising-horizon...

We should be #RaisingHorizons with @trowelblazers to stimulate, nurture and support aspiring #trowelblazers of the future.

I'm expecting #trowelblazers as well as #trailblazers at the @CroydonAirport seminar today "Flying to the Past"!

Great posse of #trowelblazers to follow for #ff! @clmorgan @alisonatkin @DrDonnaYates @lornarichardson @SarahWardAU @justinebenanty

Vast number of archaeologists and anthropologists all in one room, including huge quotient of living #trowelblazers ! http://t.co/q0cE3RlbiO

#trowelblazers cards with url/QR code to hand out to assembled multitude at today's #ArchTripos100 conference! 2/2

#trowelblazers at #tag2013 @lornarichardson @emilyglass76 @serengriffiths http://t.co/YBbzgXknLM