Looking back as one can now do over a long period of time spent at the British Museum, it is clear that a major contribution to the development of the Research Laboratory was made by Leonard Woolley not only on account of the quantity and diversity of the material that he produced for study and treatment year after year, but by the stimulating influence of his presence as a co-worker. Indeed, without this, the annual task which confronted a small and devoted laboratory staff would have been well-nigh impossible.

The first rumour of his return was quickly followed by the arrival of dozens of boxes, petrol tins, containers of any and every sort and a selection of these reached the Laboratory and duly gave forth many hundreds of match boxes, tins and cigarette packets all carefully labelled, all very dusty, but all containing treasures that meant something, at least to the excavator. And so the hospital cleanliness of the Laboratory inevitably suffered a change and rooms took on the aspect of that partially-organised chaos wherein someone can always claim to know where objects have been put. In the midst worked Woolley in the deepest concentration—and he was a whale for work—but always with a ready smile for the right kind of interruption.