Footnotes

Harris Dunscombe Colt (1901-1973), a scion of the Colt revolver family, was one of the "...exclusive group of people who worked with that archaeological giant, Sir Flinders Petrie... [and] it was inevitable he would be caught up in the web being spun by British archaeologists in the Middle East. The 1930's were an intense period of British participation in, perhaps even domination of the Palestinian archaeological scene... At that time other archaeologists must have thought Colt somewhat eccentric: not for him the choice of a well known massive tell, but some Byzantine ruins called S'beita in the desert south of Beersheba... [and] another forgotten city in the Negev Auja-el-Hafir which had suffered much damage under the Turks..." (Obituary, Bennett, C.-M., Levant, 7:1, iii-v).

C. L. Woolley and T.E. Lawrence had already surveyed the site at S'beita on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1914 and, despite Colt's being the only large scale excavation there, it would appear his findings at S'beita were never fully published other than a report by Colin Baly, one of the team members. Much of the material from the excavations including dig notes and photographs were destroyed by insurgents in 1938 when Colt's house was attacked. Only the lintel bearing the inscription in ancient Greek 'With good luck. Colt built (this house) with his own money' survived. However, Colt's suitcase, left unclaimed after leaving in 1938, was recently discovered in lost property at the port of Haifa and was found to contain many important artefacts from the site hitherto thought lost. The contents of the suitcase are now on display at the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa. Shivta was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in June 2005.

Colt's important work at Auja Hafir proved it to be the Byzantine city of Nessana as shown by discoveries of papyri at the site including a collection of Greek church records and a group of Arab administrative texts, both dating from the seventh century. Colt gave up field archaeology at the outbreak of war in 1939 to set up the Colt Archaeological Institute and its publishing arm, under which his findings at Auja Hafir were published in three volumes in 1962. Welbury Kendall, the architect who drew up these plans, was involved with the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and worked with Colt on both sites.