Women in archaeology is an aspect of the history of archaeology and the topic of women in science more generally. In the nineteenth century women were discouraged from pursuing interests in archaeology, however throughout the twentieth century participation and recognition of expertise increased. However women in archaeology face discrimination based on their gender and many face harassment in the workplace.
As a professional field of study, archaeology was initially established as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century and typically developed from people engaged in the study of antiquities. [1] [2] Prior to the Victorian era, women in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States were rarely engaged in professional archaeology (though at this time, archaeology was not so much a profession as the practice of wealthy individuals, with workers paid to undertake the digging). [3] Participation by women in the field was discouraged, both by men and societal pressure, as the occupation masculinized the accepted view of women as homemakers and nurturers. [4] Even after they began to enter the field, the reluctance of male colleagues to accept them in fieldwork, led many women to choose roles outside of academia, seeking positions in museums or in cultural preservation associations. [5] In Europe, women often entered the discipline as research partners with their husbands or to learn about the cultures when their spouses were posted to Colonial outposts or missionary fields. [6] From the mid-1850s women's higher education facilities began offering separate courses for women and in the 1870s several European countries opened university curricula to women. [7] Though women were accepted into the study of archaeology, they were rarely considered equals and often were not admitted to prestigious societies, [8] or allowed to complete training in the field. Swedish archaeologist Hanna Rydh was one exception, [9] as was French archaeologist Madeleine Colani, [10] but more typical were the hard-fought battles of women such as Edith Hall, Harriet Boyd Hawes, Marina Picazo , Eugénie Sellers Strong, and Blanche E. Wheeler to undertake excavation projects. [9] More typically, women such as German archaeologist Johanna Mestorf, who worked as a museum curator and academic; [11] writers such as British Egyptologist Amelia Edwards and [12] Persianist Gertrude Bell, [10] and French Persianist Jean Dieulafoy, who traveled and wrote about excavations during their travels; and women like Tessa Wheeler, who assisted her husband by compiling reports and raising money, were the pioneers of women archaeologists. [13]
At the turn of the twentieth century, British women such as Eugénie Sellers Strong, who taught at the Archaeological Institute of America and British School at Rome and Margaret Murray, who lectured at University College London, began to join the ranks of university staff. [10] By the time of World War I, the majority of women working in the archaeology were employed in museums. Noted women archaeological curators or museum directors include Dane Maria Mogensen, Greek Semni Karouzou and Spaniards Concepción Blanco Mínguez and Ursicina Martínez Gallego [14] To carve out their own niches, women typically focused on research close to where they lived or from their native cultures, or undertook studies researching household items typically ignored by men. For example, Marija Gimbutas focused on Eastern European topics even after relocating to the United States; [15] Lanier Simmons, who wanted to study Maya culture, ended up researching closer to home because of family obligations; [16] and Harriet Boyd focused on domestic objects and utensils. [15] Greek Anna Apostolaki, Dane Margrethe Hald, Spaniard Felipa Niño Mas and Swede Agnes Geijer became experts on textiles; Dane Elisabeth Munksgaard focused on clothing, [17] while Norwegian Charlotte Blindheim studied Viking costumes and jewelry. [18] Pottery and art were also topics on which women focused. [17]
Prior to the 1970s, even women like Gertrude Caton-Thompson, Hilda Petrie, and Elizabeth Riefstahl, pioneers in Egyptology who had made distinguished contributions to the field, were omitted from compilations of experts working in the field. If women were mentioned at all, their roles were trivialized. [19] During the New Deal, the Works Progress Administration sponsored excavations at mound sites in Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina, which allowed women of color and working-class women to participate in archaeological work; however, class- and race-based definitions of femininity curtailed broad participation by white women, who tended to focus on participating in amateur organizations. [20]
The formal conservation of archaeological objects in Western museum environments from the 1880s onwards was dominated by male scientists and technicians. However, conservation of objects in the field and in educational settings was predominantly performed by women, often the wives and relatives of male archaeologists. Similarly to female archaeologists, these expert contributions to archaeological practice were omitted from official publications and records of archaeological work undertaken.[ citation needed ]
The expertise of early female conservators was then applied and refined at the Institute of Archaeology at St John's Lodge, Regents Park, from 1937 to 1959. When the Institute of Archaeology moved to Gordon Square in 1959, a conservation teaching programme was established by Ione Gedye who continued to teach at the institute from 1937 to 1975. [21]
The objects treated at the Lodge formed the basis of the Institute of Archaeology collections, including the Petrie Palestine collection. [22] These collections were instrumental in establishing the Institute of Archaeology as an internationally significant centre of archaeological study.[ citation needed ]
Critically analyzing the role of women in archaeology from the professionalisation of the discipline in the 19th century to the present day is a crucial task to undertake. Although there are some publications on the subject, it can be said that in general we know little about it, and that the absence of women in the histories of archaeology should lead us to reflect urgently on the way disciplinary chronicles are written. [23]
Statistics show that women experience a glass ceiling in academic archaeology. Sue Hamilton, the director of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, noted that 60–70% of the institute's undergraduate and postgraduate students were women, as were the majority of its postdoctoral researchers. However, the proportion of women amongst permanent academic staff has never been more than 31%. Women are progressively further under-represented in each academic rank at the institute: 38% of lecturers are female, 41% of senior lecturers, 17% of readers, and just 11% of professors. [24] A 2016 study found a similar pattern in Australian universities. Whilst 41% of academic archaeologists were women, there was an imbalance in female representation in research fellowships (67%) compared to higher-ranked lecturing posts (31%). This study identified a "two-tiered" glass ceiling: women were less likely to obtain permanent tenure-track positions, and those that did also found it more difficult to advance to senior ranks. [25] In 1994, around 15% of the archaeologists working in the top 30 academic institutions for the field were women. [26]
On the other hand, it was within academic archaeology that women first broke the glass ceiling at a number of British universities. Dorothy Garrod was the first woman to hold a chair (in any subject) at either the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford, having been appointed Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge in 1939. [27] Kathleen Kenyon was acting director of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, during the Second World War. Rosemary Cramp was the first woman to hold a chair at the University of Durham, having been appointed Professor of Archaeology in 1971. [28] [29]
In 2014, the Survey Academic Field Experiences (SAFE) surveyed nearly 700 scientists on their experiences of sexual harassment and sexual assault during fieldwork. The survey was aimed at field researchers across a range of disciplines (e.g. anthropologists, biologists), but archaeologists constituted the largest group of respondents. The survey confirmed that sexual harassment and assault were "systemic" problems at field sites, with 64% of respondents reporting that they had personally experienced harassment and 20% that they had personally experienced sexual assault. Women, who made up the majority of the respondents (77.5%), were significantly more likely to have experienced both and were also more likely to report that such experiences were occurred "regularly" or "frequently". The targets were almost always students or early career researchers, and the perpetrators were most likely to be more senior members of the research team, although harassment and assault from peers and members of local communities were also relatively common. The experiences reported ranged from "inadvertent alienating behavior" to unwanted sexual advances, sexual assault and rape. Few respondents found that there were adequate codes of conduct or reporting procedures in place. The authors of the SAFE survey emphasised the significant negative impacts that such experiences of have on victims' job satisfaction, performance, career progression, and physical and mental health. [30]
Margaret Alice Murray was a British-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist who was born in India. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) from 1898 to 1935. She served as president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955, and published widely over the course of her career.
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt in conjunction with his wife, Hilda Urlin. Some consider his most famous discovery to be that of the Merneptah Stele, an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred. Undoubtedly at least as important is his 1905 discovery and correct identification of the character of the Proto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.
Harriet Ann Boyd Hawes was a pioneering American archaeologist, nurse, relief worker, and professor. She is best known as the discoverer and first director of Gournia, one of the first archaeological excavations to uncover a Minoan settlement and palace on the Aegean island of Crete. She was also the second person to have the honor of the Agnes Hoppin Memorial Fellowship bestowed upon her, and the very first female archeologist to speak at the Archaeological Institute of America.
UCL's Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of the Social & Historical Sciences Faculty of University College London (UCL) which it joined in 1986 having previously been a school of the University of London. It is currently one of the largest centres for the study of archaeology, cultural heritage and museum studies in the world, with over 100 members of staff and 600 students housed in a 1950s building on the north side of Gordon Square in the Bloomsbury area of Central London.
Gender archaeology is a method of studying past societies through their material culture by closely examining the social construction of gender identities and relations.
Gertrude Caton Thompson, was an English archaeologist at a time when participation by women in the discipline was uncommon. Much of her archaeological work was conducted in Egypt. However, she also worked on expeditions in Zimbabwe, Malta, and South Arabia. Her notable contributions to the field of archaeology include creating a technique for excavating archaeological sites and information on Paleolithic to Predynastic civilizations in Zimbabwe and Egypt. Caton Thompson held many official positions in organizations such as the Prehistoric Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is North America's oldest society and largest organization devoted to the world of archaeology. AIA professionals have carried out archaeological fieldwork around the world and AIA has established research centers and schools in seven countries. As of 2019, the society had more than 6,100 members and more than 100 affiliated local societies in the United States and overseas. AIA members include professional archaeologists and members of the public.
David Bourke O'Connor was an Australian-American Egyptologist who primarily worked in the fields of Ancient Egypt and Nubia.
Barbara Georgina Adams, FRSA was a distinguished British Egyptologist, archaeologist, and academic, who was a specialist in Prehistoric Egypt. She worked for many years at Hierakonpolis, where she was the co-director of the expedition. She worked at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, latterly as curator (1984–2001), and also worked on excavations across Britain.
Blanche Wheeler Williams was an archaeologist and teacher best known for her work in the Isthmus of Hierapetra and her discoveries at Gournia with colleague Harriet Boyd Hawes. She was trained at Smith College and worked as a teacher at her aunt's preparatory school until her Cretan archaeological digs in 1900 and 1901. Williams was married in 1904 and did not return to the field after contributing to a 1908 publication, though she wrote a biography of her aunt and helped with her husband's travel book.
Elinor Wight Gardner, a geology lecturer at Bedford College, London and research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, is best known for her field surveys with Gertrude Caton–Thompson of the Kharga Oasis which are now recognized as pioneering interdisciplinary research in Africa.
Martha Sharp Joukowsky was a Near Eastern archaeologist and a retired member of the faculty of Brown University known for her fieldwork at the ancient site of Petra in Jordan.
Semni Papaspyridi-Karouzou was a Greek classical archaeologist who specialized in the study of pottery from ancient Greece. She was the first woman to join the Greek Archaeological Service; she excavated in Crete, Euboea, Thessaly, and the Argolid, and worked as Curator of ceramic collections at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for over thirty years. She experienced political persecution under the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. She has been described by the archaeologists Marianna Nikolaidou and Dimitra Kokkinidou as "perhaps the most important woman in Greek archaeology", and by the newspaper To Vima as "the last representative of the generation of great archaeologists".
Hester A. Davis (1930-2014) was an American archaeologist. Arkansas' first State Archaeologist, she was instrumental in creating national public policy and conservancy standards for cultural preservation as well as developing professional and ethical standards for archaeologists. She was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including two distinguished service awards and induction into the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame.
Peter Alexander René van Dommelen is a Dutch archaeologist and academic, who specialises in the archaeology of the Western Mediterranean and Phoenician-Punic archaeology. Since July 2015, he has been Director of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University.
Marie Louise Stig Sørensen is a Danish archaeologist and academic. She is Professor of European Prehistory and Heritage Studies at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Bronze Age Archaeology at the University of Leiden. Her research focuses on Bronze Age Europe, heritage, and archaeological theory.
Sara Champion was a British archaeologist with an interest in the European Iron Age and the role and visibility of women working in archaeology. She was editor of PAST, the newsletter of The Prehistoric Society from 1997 until her death in 2000. The Prehistoric Society hosts an annual Sara Champion Memorial Lecture.
Dorothy Cross Jensen was an anthropologist, archaeologist, and public educator. Her research transformed both the fields of Middle Eastern archaeology and New Jersey prehistory. In 1936, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Oriental Studies and Anthropology. She served as an assistant curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, contributing to the Tell Billa and Tepe Gawra excavations in Iraq under Professor Ephraim A Speiser. Using this research, she published "The Pottery of Tepe Gawra" which became a foundational document in the field of Middle Eastern ceramics. Her dissertation, "Moveable Property in Nuzi Documents," is described as a "classic" in her field. Committed to public education, Cross served as State Archaeologist for the New Jersey State Museum, which she was involved in for 43 years. She was also a professor at Hunter College, where she served as a Divisional Chairman of the Department of Anthropology.
Encarnación Cabré Herreros was a Spanish archaeologist.
Isabel Clarisa Millan Garcia was a Spanish archaeologist and museum curator from Madrid, Spain. She was born in Calatayud, Spain and died in Madrid, where she attended college and spent much of her career.