Diggers and Collectors: Australians as antiquities collectors in the First World War, Progress Review James Donaldson

Australians collected all manner of ancient artefacts during the First World War. This paper takes as its focus the largest of these artefacts to be returned to Australian—the Shellal Mosaic—the floor of a 6th century CE church encountered and removed by Australians on the Wadi Ghuzze south of Gaza in 1917. Previous approaches to the Shellal Mosaic have explore its art historical significance, or approached its removal as an example of Australian wartime antiquarianism. This paper goes beyond these initial studies to explore the motivations of the Chaplain William Maitland Woods, the mosaic’s excavator and champion, in removing the Shellal and other ancient mosaics, and depositing them in museums and churches in Australia. It contextualises the story of the Shellal Mosaic with Woods’ Anglo-Catholicism and argues that Woods made meaning with the mosaics he acquired during the war in support of both Church and Empire.

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