Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister was an Irish archaeologist.
R. A. Stewart Macalister
Line painted in 1900 (at top of image, marked "PEF") by Robert A.S. Macalister showing the level of the Dead Sea.
Palestine Exploration Fund
The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study of the Levant region, also known as Palestine. Often simply known as the PEF, its initial objective was to carry out surveys of the topography and ethnography of Ottoman Palestine – producing the PEF Survey of Palestine. Its remit was considered to fall between an expeditionary survey and military intelligence gathering. There was also strong religious interest from Christians; William Thomson, Archbishop of York, was the first President of the PEF.
PEF rock: Mark on boulder used by the PEF as a reference level (datum) for surveying the Dead Sea in the beginning of the 20th century
"Plan of the Noble Sanctuary" from The Survey of Western Palestine-Jerusalem (1884)
Women grind grain with a hand mill, Palestine (1900)
