Diana Victoria Warcup Kirkbride-Halbaek (22 October 1915 – 13 August 1997) was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 archaeologist

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

 who specialised in the prehistory

Prehistory

Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

 of the Near East

Near East

The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...

.

Biography

She attended Wycombe Abbey School in High Wycombe

High Wycombe

High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...

 and served in the Women's Royal Naval Service

Women's Royal Naval Service

The Women's Royal Naval Service was the women's branch of the Royal Navy.Members included cooks, clerks, wireless telegraphists, radar plotters, weapons analysts, range assessors, electricians and air mechanics...

 during the Second World War. She completed a postgraduate diploma at University College London

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

 in 1950 studying Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

n and Palestinian

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 archaeology under Sir Max Mallowan

Max Mallowan

Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, CBE was a prominent British archaeologist, specialising in ancient Middle Eastern history, and the second husband of Dame Agatha Christie.-Life and work:...

 and Dame Kathleen Kenyon

Kathleen Kenyon

Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon , was a leading archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She is best known for her excavations in Jericho in 1952-1958.-Early life:...

. Kirkbride went to work on the excavations of Jericho

Jericho

Jericho ; is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of more than 20,000. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently...

 from 1952 to 1955. In 1953, she began fieldwork in Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

, including the restoration of the Jerash

Jerash

Jerash, the Gerasa of Antiquity, is the capital and largest city of Jerash Governorate , which is situated in the north of Jordan, north of the capital Amman towards Syria...

 Theatre and excavations at Petra

Petra

Petra is a historical and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma'an that is famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduits system. Established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan as well as its most visited...

 in 1956. During her studies of the paleolithic

Paleolithic

The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...

 and Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 of the area, she discovered a small rock shelter called Wadi Madamagh and made excavations at Ard Tlaili

Ard Tlaili

Ard Tlaili or Tell Ard Tlaili is a small tell mound archaeological site in a plain at the foot of the Lebanon Mountains 11km northwest of Baalbeck, in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon....

 in Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

. She also discovered a major Neolithic site at Beidha where she led the excavations for the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem from 1958 until 1967.

It was during this work that she met Danish paleobotanist Hans Helbaek whom she married at the end of the 1960s. She continued work in Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 in the 1970s where she made another discovery of another Neolithic site called Umm Dabaghiyah. After her husband died of a stroke in the late 1970s she returned to Beidha for a season of excavations in 1983. She also finished work compiling the results from Beidha and Umm Dabaghiyah and started planning a new excavation of a Nabataean temple at Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum also known as The Valley of the Moon is a valley cut into the sandstone and granite rock in south Jordan at to the east of Aqaba. It is the largest wadi in Jordan. The name Rum most likely comes from an Aramaic root meaning 'high' or 'elevated'. To reflect its proper Arabic...

 which was not completed before her death in August 1997 at Arrhus, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

.

Positions held

• Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq.
• Oxford University's Gerald Avery Wainwright Fellowship in Near Eastern Archaeology
• Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries

Selected bibliography

• Kirkbride, Diana & Garrod, Dorothy Anne Elizabeth., Excavation of the Abri Zumoffen, a paleolithic rock-shelter near Adlun, South Lebanon, s.n., 1961
• Kirkbride, Diana & Kenyon, Kathleen Mary., Scarabs, British School of Archaeology, 1969.
• Kirkbride, Diana., Early Byblos and the Beqaa, 1969.
• Kirkbride, Diana., Five seasons at the pre-pottery neolithic village of Beidha in Jordan, 1966.
• Kirkbride, Diana & Kenyon, Kathleen Mary., Excavations at Jericho 1957-58, Palestine Exploration Fund, 1960.