Gertrude Caton Thompson FBA (1 February 1888 – 18 April 1985)[1] was an English archaeologist at a time when participation by women in the discipline was uncommon.

[1][4] Her interest in archaeology began on a trip to Egypt with her mother in 1911, followed by a series of lectures on Ancient Greece given by Sarah Paterson at the British Museum.

[3] The following year she began attending courses at the University of Cambridge, before joining further excavations at Qau in Egypt with Petrie and Guy Brunton in 1924.

[1] In 1921, along with Margaret Murray, Gertrude Caton Thompson worked at the excavation of the megalithic temple of Borg en Nadur near St. George's Bay in Malta.

Her responsibilities included investigating the caves near the temple searching for neanderthal skulls as evidence for a land bridge between Malta and the continent of Africa.

Though she did not find evidence to support this theory, the excavation yielded other notable artifacts, such as Bronze Age pottery that closely paralleled Sicilian styles of the same period.

Since the Kharga Scarp contained many Paleolithic sites, Caton Thompson was able to excavate many implements used by those civilizations using meticulous soil scrutiny and how she noted where objects were positioned in relation to each other.

Known since the 16th century, Great Zimbabwe had been previously excavated by James Theodore Bent and David Randall-MacIver and there was debate as to whether the site was the work of Africans (MacIver's view) or of some other civilisation.

Working with Kathleen Kenyon, Caton Thompson's excavations led her to the view that Zimbabwe was the product of a "native civilisation".

She received hate mail from Victor Loret and Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher, whose views on the Great Zimbabwe she challenged.

[21] Towards the end of 1937 Caton Thompson and Elinor Gardner, accompanied by Freya Stark, initiated the first systematic excavation in the Yemen at Hadhramaut (coincidentally, also a region explored by Theodore Bent).

When she and the Navarros retired from academic life in 1956, Caton Thompson moved with them to their home in Broadway, Worcestershire - Court Farm.

[3] In 1961 she was a founding member of the British School of History and Archaeology in East Africa and was made an honorary fellow after serving on the council for 10 years.