Leonard Woolley was the son of clergyman and was brother to Geoffrey Harold Woolley and George Cathcart Woolley. He was born at 13 Southwold Road, Upper Clapton, in the modern London Borough of Hackney and educated at St John's School, Leatherhead and New College, Oxford

In 1905, Woolley became assistant keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Volunteered by Arthur Evans to run the excavations on the Roman site at Corbridge for Francis Haverfield, Woolley began his excavation career there in 1906, later admitting in Spadework that "I had never studied archaeological methods even from books... and I had not any idea how to make a survey or a ground-plan" (Woolley 1953:15). T. E. Lawrence worked with Woolley on the excavation of the Hittite city of Carchemish from 1912 to 1914. His work at Ur (in charge of the joint venture between the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania) began in 1922, and he made important discoveries in the course of excavating the royal cemeteries there, including the Copper Bull and the Ram in a Thicket figurines, one of which is in the British Museum and the other in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Agatha Christie's novel, Murder in Mesopotamia, was inspired by the discovery of the royal tombs. Christie later married Woolley's young assistant, Max Mallowan.

Ur, found in present-day Iraq, was the burial site of what may have been many Sumerian royals. Woolley discovered tombs of great material wealth. Inside these tombs were large paintings of ancient Sumerian culture at its zenith, along with gold and silver jewelry, cups and other furnishings. The most extravagant tomb was that of “Queen” Pu-Abi. Amazingly enough, Queen Pu-Abi’s tomb was untouched by looters. Inside the tomb, many well-preserved items were found, including a cylindrical seal bearing her name in Sumerian. Her body was found buried along with those of two attendants, who had presumably been poisoned in order to continue to serve her after death. Woolley was able to reconstruct Pu-Abi's funeral ceremony from objects found in her tomb. Her headdress, cylinder seal and body were formerly on display at the University of Pennsylvania, however they are currently being displayed in the British Museum in London.

In 1936, after his discoveries at Ur, Woolley was interested in finding ties between the ancient Aegean and Mesopotamian civilizations. This led him to the Syrian city of Al Mina. From 1937 to 1939, he was in Tell Atchana.

His archaeological career was interrupted by the United Kingdom's entry into World War II, and he became part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Allied armies.

After the war, he returned to Tell Atchana, where he continued to work from 1946 until 1949.

By Woolley

• Dead Towns and Living Men London (1920)
• Digging Up The Past (1930)
• Alalakh, An Account of the Excavations at Tell , Oxford, (1955)
• Spadework: Adventures in Archaeology (1953)
• Excavations at Ur: A Record of 12 Years’ Work (1954)
• The Ancient Near Eastern World, Oxford, (2005)

About Woolley

• Woolley of Ur H. V. F. Winstone, London: Secker and Warburg (1990)