The Plec de lectura is dedicated to Margaret Murray, the first archaeologist to study the remains of the Talayotic period in Menorca. This year these triptychs will be dedicated to important figures that have led to the declaration of World Heritage.
Margaret Alice Murray (Calcutta 1863 - United Kingdom 1963) is a fascinating character related to the archaeology of Menorca that deserves to be analysed in depth. Thanks to her, in the 1930s, the first excavations were carried out in Menorca using scientific methodology at the Trepucó and Sa Torreta de Tramuntana sites, but she also promoted a very interesting network of contacts between the intellectuals who moved around the Ateneu de Maó in the second quarter of the 20th century and some British researchers linked to the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at the University of Cambridge and University College London, where she worked.
The protagonist of this triptych was a unique woman for the times in which she lived. A university graduate, student and collaborator of the Egyptologist William Petrie, a feminist by conviction, she focused her interests above all on anthropology and archaeology. She was well known for her work on witchcraft and Egyptology, but what brought her to Menorca was her research on Mediterranean megaliths and her comparison with Maltese monuments, an island where she had previously excavated. The photograph that accompanies Margaret Murray's texts is by an unknown author and shows the taula and talayot of Trepucó before its excavation. It belongs to the Guillem Pons Buades collection deposited in the Arxiu d'Imatge i So de Menorca.