Basil Hennessy

John Basil Hennessy AO (10 February 1925 - 27 October 2013), was an Australian archaeologist of the Ancient Near East and Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney.

Born in Horsham, Victoria, Australia in 1925, the eldest child of Thomas Basil Hennessy and Nell Poultney, Hennessy was educated in nearby Ballarat, before leaving school at 17 to join the Royal Australian Navy. Released from military service in 1946, Hennessy enrolled at the University of Sydney in early 1947 with the intention of studying anthropology. In 1948, however, Arthur Dale Trendall and James Stewart founded the University's Department of Archaeology, Hennessy becoming one of their first undergraduates.

Graduating with a BA Hons in 1950, Hennessy embarked on a tour throughout the Middle East, finishing at Ankara, capital of Turkey where Hennessy held the inaugural student scholarship at the newly created British School of Archaeology in Ankara.

Hennessy returned to Jerusalem at the end of 1951 in order to join the first season of renewed excavations at Jericho under the direction of Kathleen Kenyon. It was at Jericho that Hennessy was exposed to the Wheeler-Kenyon technique of baulk-debris excavation, a technique he was to employ and adapt widely in his own subsequent excavations.

Returning to Australia via London, Hennessy became engaged to Ruth Shannon. The couple were married in 1954 and subsequently had three children.

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