British archaeologist James Leslie Starkey was probably assassinated over a bitter land dispute involving his excavation at ancient Lachish, according to research shedding new light on his murder 88 years ago.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem study identifies Palestinian rebel commander Issa al-Battat as the likely killer and challenges the long-standing account that Starkey was a random victim of violence during the Arab Revolt against British rule.
Researchers Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and historian Dr Roy Marom, of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, combined archival documents, intelligence records and Palestinian oral histories to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the killing.
Their findings, published in the Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, suggest the attack arose from grievances among landowners in al-Qubayba, a Palestinian village neighbouring the excavation.
The authors describe a targeted assassination rather than indiscriminate violence, while acknowledging that their conclusions rest on converging historical evidence, not a participant’s confession.
Ambushed on the road to Jerusalem
Starkey was among the leading British archaeologists working in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. From 1932, he directed excavations at Tell ed-Duweir, identified as biblical Lachish, one of ancient Judah’s most important cities.
Supported by prominent British patrons, including pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome, the expedition attracted international attention.
On January 10, 1938, Starkey left Lachish for Jerusalem to attend the inauguration of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, now known as the Rockefeller Museum.
Near Hebron, armed men stopped his vehicle. According to his driver’s testimony, they identified Starkey as the excavation director, ordered the driver away and shot the archaeologist.
The murder shocked the international academic community and contributed to the expedition’s premature closure.
British authorities characterised the killing as banditry amid the Arab Revolt of 1936–39 and officially cleared al-Qubayba of responsibility. The precise motive and identity of those involved remained disputed for decades.
Earlier research exposed land conflict
The latest findings build on Garfinkel’s 2016 study, “The Murder of James Leslie Starkey near Lachish”, published in Palestine Exploration Quarterly.
Drawing on previously unpublished expedition reports and Mandatory Department of Antiquities records, that research documented a prolonged confrontation over agricultural plots on the summit of Tel Lachish.
Attempts to buy or lease the land repeatedly stalled. British authorities eventually expropriated the disputed property so excavations could proceed, while delays in compensating affected families deepened resentment.
“The landowners never received full compensation for the expropriated land, undoubtedly a strong motive for revenge,” Garfinkel wrote in 2016.
That work established a possible motive but could not conclusively connect the dispute to those responsible for the murder.
The new study adds Palestinian accounts and documentary evidence that the researchers say independently support the earlier hypothesis.
“When I first examined the Lachish expedition archives in 2016, it became clear that Starkey’s murder could not be understood without the bitter conflict over the land,” Garfinkel said.
“What we did not have then was the Palestinian perspective. The new evidence, particularly the oral testimonies, allows us to connect the archival documents with the memories of the local community and reconstruct the circumstances of the assassination much more clearly.”
Villagers’ accounts reveal resentment
A key source was the Palestinian Rural History Project, curated by Marom, which records the experiences and memories of Palestinian rural communities.
Interviews with former al-Qubayba residents and their descendants preserved accounts of families losing access to land cultivated for generations.
Their grievances extended beyond ownership to the removal or destruction of trees, restrictions on farming and the exclusion of some affected families from jobs at the excavation.
The relationship was not uniformly hostile. The expedition provided employment, medical care and economic opportunities for many villagers. Others, however, regarded its activities as an unjust intrusion on their livelihoods.
The researchers also examined a previously overlooked petition submitted to the Department of Antiquities in May 1937 by landowner Salih al-Hajj Hamad Abu Awwad.
He complained that parts of his land had been used for several years without the compensation he believed had been promised.
“I am a poor and weak man, and my livelihood depends entirely on the yield of this land,” he wrote, according to the study’s translation.
The researchers found that compensation arrangements for the expropriated land were not finalised until 1943, five years after Starkey’s death.
Rebel commander identified
Combining Palestinian historical sources with British and Zionist intelligence records, Marom and Garfinkel identify al-Battat as the likely assassin.
Their reconstruction suggests intermediaries linked to both the village and the armed insurgency may have helped arrange the attack.
They argue that the ambush location was significant. Killing Starkey on the road near Hebron, rather than at Lachish, may have been intended to distance al-Qubayba from the operation and limit the risk of British reprisals.
The driver’s account—that the gunmen established Starkey’s identity before ordering the driver away—also supports the researchers’ argument that the archaeologist was deliberately selected.
The findings do not remove every uncertainty. Earlier researchers have differed over the identity and fate of those involved, and the latest account remains a historical reconstruction rather than a definitive criminal finding.
Archaeology and colonial power
The study places Starkey’s death within the wider relationship between archaeology, land ownership and British colonial authority.
The Lachish excavations transformed understanding of the ancient biblical world, but depended on access to land claimed and cultivated by local families.
Those competing interests became increasingly fraught during the Arab Revolt, as opposition to British rule intensified. The researchers argue that the dispute cannot be separated from that political setting.
Garfinkel examined the expedition’s broader history in his 2024 book, Colonial Archaeology in Palestine in the 1930s: The First Expedition to Lachish.
The latest research shows how official archives and local oral histories can illuminate different sides of the same events. Together, they offer a fuller account of how a celebrated archaeological enterprise became entangled in a conflict over land, livelihoods and political power.
