Karen Frifelt

Karen Frifelt (15 September 1925 — 6 December 2012) was a Danish archaeologist and librarian. Frifelt was a pioneer of Arabian Gulf Archaeology. In 1959 she was the first woman to participate in Peter Glob’s Archaeological expedition to Bahrain. Later she directed the expedition’s field operation in Abu Dhabi from 1966 becoming the first female archaeologist to work in the future UAE, and most notably in 1972 Frifelt became the first archaeologist to lead an expedition into the Sultanat of Oman. In Abu Dhabi she was for years in charge of Moesgaard Museum's excavations at the now UNSCO world heritage site of Hili. During a meeting between Frifelt and the ruler and founding father of the United Arabi Emirates Sheikh Zayed al Nahyan the latter expressed admiration for Karan Frifelt’s courage. Zayed commended how Frifelt as a female had left her own country to travel to an unknow and distant place such as Abu Dhabi to explore its prehistory. Zayed told Karen he wished women of his nation would someday display the same kind of enterprise. In Oman the 1972 expedition led by Frifelt discovered the archaeological landscapes of Bat later also inscribed as a UNSCO world heritage site. Frifelt surveyed and excavated in Oman in the years 1972-1978, 1985-1986, and 1989.

In 2004 Soren Blau from the University of Adelaide, Australia, published a biographical article in Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, that highlighted the pioneering work of Karen Frifelt and her legendary female colleague Beatrice de Cardi. Provided by Wikipedia