Lecture Summaries:  13 November, 2002

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'Forward to Jerusalem':  Photographs of the Beersheba Campaign in the Collections of the Palestine Exploration Fund
by
Felicity Cobbing
Curator, PEF

      The Beersheba Campaign of 1917 was one of the most decisive actions of the First World War.  The region through which it took place (Beersheba and the Negev) was of fluctuating strategic and agricultural significance at various times from the Chalcolithic (4,000 BCE) through to the 20th century CE.  This lecture will trace the course of the Beersheba campaign as far as Jerusalem, illustrated with photographs from the PEF's collections.  The lecture will then look at the archaeology of Beersheba and the Negev, identifying the characteristics which have made it such a strategically significant area at certain times throughout its history, and will attempt to put the campaign of the First World War into the context of the usage of the region through time.