Completes and abandons the Ashkelon dig after systematically recording strata and find locations, an early use of formal excavation recording methods in the Holy Land.
On 10 June 1815, Lady Hester Stanhope brought her excavation at Ashkelon to a close, having directed her team through several weeks of digging guided by a medieval Italian manuscript describing a legendary treasure. Although the anticipated gold hoard was never found, the expedition's true significance lay in its methodology.
Under Stanhope's direction, her team—working with her physician Charles Meryon—kept relatively systematic records of the layers of earth and rubble excavated and the locations of finds within the site, an approach that anticipated the stratigraphic recording methods that would become standard archaeological practice only much later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her reliance on a historical manuscript as a guide to excavation is also cited by scholars as one of the earliest documented uses of textual sources to direct field archaeology in the Holy Land.
Taken together, these practices have led historians of archaeology, including contributors to Biblical Archaeology Review and the TrowelBlazers project documenting women in archaeology, to credit Stanhope's Ashkelon campaign as a genuine forerunner of scientific excavation in the region, decades ahead of the professionalized digs of the later Victorian era. It remains a landmark case study in the history of women's contributions to archaeology, despite Stanhope never considering herself a professional excavator.