The institute was established in 1919 as the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ). The London-based Palestine Exploration Fund was instrumental in its foundation.
The first Director was British archaeologist John Garstang, and among its earliest students was architect-archaeologist George Horsfield, later Chief Inspector of Antiquities in British MandateTransjordan. An excavation at Tughbah Caves by BSAJ student Francis Turville-Petre in 1925 yielded an important prehistoric find, the Galilee skull.[3] Under Garstang's directorship, the BSAJ began excavations on Mount Ophel, Jerusalem, with the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Garstang resigned his post as Director of the BSAJ in 1926 and British archaeologist John Winter Crowfoot, who had trained at the British School at Athens, became the School's second Director. With his wife, Molly Crowfoot, a noted expert in textiles, crafts and botany, John Crowfoot conducted excavations at Mount Ophel, Jerusalem (1927–1929), Jerash (1928–1930) and Samaria (1930–1935).[4]Dorothy Garrod, who excavated at Mount Carmel as a BSAJ student in 1929 along with Mary Kitson-Clark and Elinor Ewbank, produced evidence of the Natufian culture.[5]
^Bar-Yosef, O.; Callander, J. A (1997). "Forgotten Archaeologist: The Life of Francis Turville-Petre". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 129 (1): 2–18. doi:10.1179/peq.1997.129.1.2.
^Crowfoot, E. 1990. Crowfoot, John Winter, in E. Meyers (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (Vol 2), 72-73; Crowfoot, E. 1997. Grace Mary Crowfoot 1877-1957. Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archaeology. [Online], available at Brown University. http://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/search.phpArchived 2011-06-08 at the Wayback Machine.
^Smith, P. 2001. Pioneers in Palestine: The Women Excavators of el-Wad Cave, in Whitehouse, R. Women in Archaeology and Antiquity. London: University College London
^Viviano, B. T. (1991). "Profiles of Archaeological Institutes: Ėcole Biblique et Archaeologique Française de Jerusalem". Biblical Archaeologist. 54 (3): 160–167. doi:10.2307/3210264. JSTOR3210264. S2CID163407177.