| Description | These files relate to skulls excavated in the 1930s at the site of Lachish, in what was then British Mandate Palestine (the site is now in Israel). The skulls were sent on loan to London for research in the Biometric Laboratory at University College London. The work was done by Denziloe L. Risdon between 1936 and 1939, and he published his results in the journal Biometrika: Risdon, D.L. 1939. A Study of the Cranial and other Human Remains from Palestine Excavated at Tell Duweir (Lachish) by the Wellcome-Marston Archaeological Research Expedition, University College London, Biometrika 31.1-2, 99–166.
DF PAL/141/3/3-8 are Risdon’s working notes from that project, relating to craniometric data he was collecting and subjecting to various forms of statistical analysis. An undated cover note in DF PAL/141/3/5 (envelope 2 of 3) reads:
“PAPERS ETC. IN CONNECTION WITH PUBLICATION ON THE HUMAN REMAINS FOUND AT LACHISH - PALESTINE BY THE WELLCOME EXPEDITION UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE LATE J.L. STARKEY ESQ.
THESE PAPERS ETC COMPRISE THE ORIGINAL WORK OF MR D.L. RISDON WHICH WAS PUBLISHED IN ‘BIOMETRIKA’"
While none of the various tables, skull contour drawings and notebooks are ever signed or labelled by Risdon as being by Risdon, his authorship in the case of DF PAL/141/3/8 has been confirmed by a researcher in 2022, as it contained a draft letter that describes his Lachish research and requests he be re-awarded his current studentship. It also contains a draft list of questions which he later sent to the Lachish team. The data in the notebooks also reappears in the many graph paper tables in other files in this series. So the current online database title for this file ’notebooks of unnamed origin (regarding Lachish, Fara, Gaza and Azab) could be corrected to ‘D.L. Risdon notebooks (regarding Lachish, Fara, Gaza and Arab crania) (‘Azab’ is an error, based on someone’s misreading of the handwriting). I’ve also recently been looking at related correspondence in the Lachish archives at the British Museum, and Risdon’s comments on the progress of his work specifically mention the different stages of his research, as represented by your file contents at the NHM, including collecting metric data, processing it, and drawing skull contours. So I don’t have any doubts that what you now have represents his raw data, and its various stages of working prior to publication. A lot of the data in his notes - particularly that relating to the Egyptian and Palestinian material - was never published.
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