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Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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Subject: Archaeology, History and Theory of Archaeology Online Publication Date: Jul 2020
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199567942.013.037
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
Jana Esther Fries and Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann
The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory
Edited by Andrew Gardner, Mark Lake, and Ulrike Sommer
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter discusses the influence of feminist theories on theory construction, self-con
ception, and the public perception of archaeology and its various sub-disciplines. The the
oretical foundations of gender archaeology are also considered. As there are many femi
nist theories as well as archaeologies, the chapter also summarizes what can be de
scribed as broad sets of overlaps, and to an extent simplifies the variety of different
points of view. Feminist criticism as well as new questions, models, and methods based on
it reached archaeology in the 1980s, later than the other humanities. Initial efforts could
be classified as women’s studies that mostly aimed to balance a male-biased view of the
past by adding a female view to it. Since the 1990s, the term ‘gender’ with its various as
pects is the focus of discussion. The number, convertibility, and history of genders are al
so important topics. In addition, feminist archaeology focuses on archaeology’s own insti
tutions, their social rules, their language, and their image, which are also linked to the
gender expectations of the surrounding society. These aspects are also connected to the
way images of the past are presented to the public, and which effects they have on gen
der discourses.
Keywords: feminism, gender, history of archaeology, womens’ studies, male bias, standpoint theory, gender
theory, dichotomy, poststructuralism, equity issues, images
Introduction: a blossoming garden and the de
sire for an overall view
To make it clear right from the start: there is no one single feminism, and no one single
feminist theory. Consequently, there can be no description of the influence of feminist the
ory on archaeology in general. Feminism is a multitudinous bundle of themes—from philo
sophical theories, social movements, academic methods, and political convictions to indi
vidual social behaviour. Frequently, several of these aspects are combined in one person,
and this is also true of many texts, institutions, and (research) projects. For example,
even if one considers feminism simply as a political theory, it soon becomes clear that
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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there are a large number of different trends, thought patterns, methods, and conclusions,
which produce a seriously confused situation. All this—set against the many different
branches of archaeology, with their multiplicity of objectives and schools, diverse meth
ods and theoretical approaches, as well as different focal points in different countries and
at different times—results in an almost boundless garden of feminist archaeologies that
sometimes resembles a jungle. Nevertheless, we shall attempt to provide an overall view
of the theoretical foundations of feminist issues, methods, and major research topics in
archaeology, even though this will occasionally seem more a like a walk through the gar
den than a view from above.
A peculiarity of feminist archaeology should be mentioned immediately: its subject matter
is far more than just the historical and prehistoric past. Indeed, archaeological institu
tions, their scholars, structures, and social rules are also regularly among its research
topics. Academic methods and the unspoken tenets of archaeology are questioned, and
the connections between the biographies of persons and institutions and the research
they conduct are examined. In addition, the transmission of archaeological findings and
their effect on other fields of study and the general public are investigated. Finally, the in
fluence of popular ideas of prehistory on the discussion of gender today is considered. In
other words, everything that has anything to do with archaeology, archaeologists, and
gender can be a subject of feminist archaeology.
Origins
Feminist theories and issues were adopted relatively late by academic archaeology (for a
summary of the history of feminist theories in archaeology see e.g. Stig Sørensen 2000:
16–40). Although the situation varies from country to country and from one academic
field to another, archaeology in general was—and still is—a latecomer from the point of
view of feminist theory. In the humanities and social sciences such as social anthropology,
sociology, or history, second-wave feminism was already having an effect in the 1970s.
Here, there was an increase in women’s studies aimed on the one hand at elucidating the
existing blind spots in academic fields, while on the other questioning basic content, theo
ries, and methods from a feminist point of view, and thus influencing the academic dis
course. While some fields of study have abandoned an androcentric approach and
brought women into greater focus under the influence of second-wave feminism, further
feminist criticism of scientific methodology developed simultaneously within the feminist
movement. Under the influence of third-wave feminism, the diversity within the groups
under consideration became ever more significant. However, in most European countries,
feminist approaches in academic archaeology were first taken up to any relevant extent
only in the late 1980s and 1990s. In some countries, they play a negligible role even to
day.
The first (recorded) supra-individual initiative to consider archaeology from a feminist
point of view was in 1979, at a workshop in Norway’s Utstein Abbey with the program
matic title Var de alle menn? (‘Were they all men?’). However, the papers presented there
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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were only published in 1987 (Bertelsen, Lillehammer, and Næss 1987). In 1985, again in
Norway, the first organization of women archaeologists was founded, Kvinner i Arkeologi
in Norge (Woman in Archaeology in Norway), which published its own scientific journal
until 2005 (for the history of KAN see e.g. Engelstad 2007: 219–22). This was one of the
first publications in Europe to make feminist theories usefully available to archaeology.
In Great Britain, feminist approaches were first taken up at the meetings of the Theoreti
cal Archaeology Group: originally in 1982 (Whitehouse 2006; Dommasnes 2014: 2970f.).
In 1988, a whole issue of the Archaeological Review from Cambridge was devoted to the
topic of ‘Women and Archaeology’. In the following year, Margaret Ehrenberg (1989) pub
lished her book ‘Women in Prehistory’, a popular compendium that provided many an im
portant impetus.
In North America, archaeology is more closely linked with related disciplines than in Eu
rope; in these, feminist approaches came to fruition earlier. Here, the impetus came from
cultural anthropology and took effect in archaeology from about the 1980s onwards
(Ehrenberg 1989: 8f.; Gilchrist 1999: 2–16; Nelson 1997: 31–6; 2006,:1–5). The foundation
was laid in the paper by Margaret W. Conkey and Janet Spector (1984), ‘Archaeology and
the study of gender’. Extensive publishing activity on feminist topics in archaeology fol
lowed. This contributed to the establishment of these approaches as an important aspect
of archaeology, and also provided an impetus for discussions in European archaeologies
(e.g. Gero and Conkey 1991; Walde and Willows 1991; Nelson, Nelson, and Wylie 1994;
Nelson 1997).
During the 1990s, women’s studies and feminist approaches became a topic in German
archaeology too. Here, more than elsewhere, developments in the early years were also
influenced by the discussion that took place mainly outside university structures, for ex
ample on the question of prehistoric matriarchies. Early discussions in academic archae
ology were led by the network of women working in archaeology founded in 1991, the
Netzwerk archäologisch arbeitender Frauen (Mertens and Koch 2005).
Feministic approaches also appeared in Spanish archaeology at the beginning of the
1990s and were further developed there (Montón-Subias 2014). They were influenced by
Marxist theory to a greater extent than elsewhere (Colomer et al. 1994).
In Spain, as in Germany, feminist approaches encountered an archaeology that had long
been moulded by cultural historism (see chapter by Demoule). In Scandinavia and the
English-speaking countries, on the other hand, feminist archaeology often developed
against the background of and in discussion with processual archaeology (e.g. Engelstad
1991; Nelson 1997: 49–54). In many cases, especially in Great Britain and Germany, fe
male students and young female academics introduced the discussion of feminist themes
into archaeology departments.
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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Themes and trends
As already mentioned, feminism and archaeology are equally complex fields that are diffi
cult to grasp in their totality. However, in order to describe at least the most important as
pects of feminist archaeology, we will simplify and summarize on the one hand and, on
the other, differentiate between aspects that occur together but are in reality unconnect
ed. Relatively few publications or research projects can be attributed exclusively to any
one of the trends described below.
Women’s studies
The earliest, clearest, and theoretically least complicated feminist approach can be char
acterized as archaeological women’s studies, which date back to the 1960s. Archaeologi
cal women’s studies arose out of three fundamental insights regarding women and (ar
chaeological) research in patriarchal societies (Mascia-Lee et al. 1989; Nelson 1997: 20–
22, 32–9, 65ff.): female researchers were—and are—disadvantaged and marginalized,
their significance denied. Women, and subjects considered feminine, are massively under
represented as topics of research. As a topic, women are considered essentially unimpor
tant, and their role is defined in terms of their fathers and husbands, with their own con
tribution to social, religious, technical, or economic aspects of society disregarded or
marginalized. As a result of this male bias, the need arises to consciously and deliberately
pay attention to women and ‘feminine’ topics, to re-evaluate their importance and add ‘fe
male’ prehistory to the previously ‘male’ prehistory. This will not only produce a more ac
curate picture of the past, but also contribute to an enhanced self-awareness of women
today (Mascia-Lee et al. 1989).
Archaeological women’s studies have focused, for example, on important individual
women such as the Merovingian queens (Sasse 1986; 1991; Warmers and Périn 2012) or
the Celtic princess of Vix (Arnold 1991); or topics related to the female body (Scherzler
1997; Beausang 2005); groups of women (Gilchrist 1994); women and girls in cemeteries
(Dommasnes 1982; Sasse 1986; Bulla 1998; Brather-Walter 2014); the depiction of women
or ‘female’ symbols in rock art (Mandt 1987; Escoriza 2002); the contribution of women
to sustenance, trade, culture, or the technology of a society (Davis 1975; Dahlberg 1981;
Vinsrygge 1987; Ehrenberg 1989; Gero 1991; Watson and Kennedy 1991); their various
roles in the social fabric (Næss 1974; Koch 1996; Moraw and Kieburg 2014), or activities
that present-day Western societies consider as feminine, such as textile production, the
collection of edible plants, food preparation, or care of the sick, and their importance in
the society in question (e.g. Brumfield 1991; Jackson 1991: Montón-Subias and Sánchez-
Romero 2008).
Archaeological women’s studies also include the study of (early) female archaeologists
(e.g. du Cros and Smith 1993; Claassen 1994; Díaz-Andreu and Stig Sørensen 1998; Koch
and Mertens 2002; Nicotra 2004; Fries and Gutsmiedl-Schümann 2013a). These frequent
ly demonstrate that the achievements and importance of female archaeologists were ig
nored and forgotten. This happened, in particular, in the early days of archaeology, when
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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women were generally unable to obtain an academic education. Investigations into the
achievements of women in their own field play an important part in obtaining a realistic
picture of archaeological institutions. Moreover, by highlighting such role models, they
gain an essential function in the development of female archaeologist’s positive self-im
age.
The choice of (pre)historic women and ‘feminine’ archaeological topics can be, but is not
necessarily, due to a feminist impetus. These subjects have always been part of archaeo
logical research, even when they played a very minor role in comparison with the investi
gation of (pre)historic men and topics that are considered typically masculine (e.g. stone-
tool production, metallurgy, weapons, hunting). It is research that deliberately aims at
counterbalancing androcentric archaeology and thus re-evaluates women and their signif
icance that can be classified as feminist women’s studies. Representatives of more recent
trends in feminist archaeology have criticized straightforward women’s studies for not
questioning the very foundations of previous (subconscious) assumptions about gender
(Conkey and Tringham 1995; Roberts 1993; Nelson 1997: 33–8; Gilchrist 1999: 6–8; Joyce
2008: 66). In their view, such studies had only emphasized the female side of traditional
gender perceptions or dealt with individual exceptional women. This resulted in an essen
tialization of female roles, experiences, duties, etc., and the earlier stereotypes were
merely seen in a more positive light. Archaeological women’s studies were therefore de
scribed as the ‘add women and stir’ approach (Wicker 2010: 73). By contrast, later theo
retical papers have emphasized the variety and historicity of genders as well as their in
terconnection with other social categories.
Male bias, objectivity, and standpoint theory
Feminist criticism in the 1960s to the 1990s dealt extensively with male, or androcentric,
bias in academic studies. In archaeology, too, such a bias was addressed in detail (e.g.
Wylie et al. 1989; Engelstad 1991; Gilchrist 1999: 17–21; Lozano Rubio 2011). Feminist
critics pointed out that academic findings are very dependent on the scholar in question,
on his/her personal experience, (subconscious) prior assumptions, and the perception of
gender as formed by one’s social milieu. The awareness of these prejudices, this ‘situated
knowledge’ (Haraway 1991), led not only to the specific approaches of gynocentric re
search but also to the question of whether and, if so, to what extent completely objective
research, totally independent of the scholar in question, is actually possible.
In archaeology, this last question has also been extensively discussed within the context
of post-processual archaeology, which was highly critical about the concept of objectivity.
The conclusion reached—that, as in the case of a written text, there are innumerable
ways of ‘reading’ an archaeological context—was in fact very rarely applied to the con
cept of gender by leading theoreticians of post-processual archaeology. In feminist ar
chaeology, the question of whether objectivity was essentially possible was never conclu
sively answered (see Gilchrist 1999: 22–30; Wylie 2006; Dommasnes 2010; Wicker 2010;
Lozano Rubio 2011). Case studies on aspects of gender often implicitly assume that after
excluding any androcentric bias, an unbiased insight into gender structures in the past is
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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possible, and that archaeological methods are suitable tools for that, provided they are
used properly and without prejudice.
Influenced by Marxist criticism of science, feminist archaeology occasionally also pursued
a consciously gynocentric approach that preferentially welcomed academic activity by
women (see Engelstad 1991; Lozano Rubio 2011: 28–30). Such a gynocentric approach
concurs with Sarah Harding’s standpoint theory (1991) or Donna Haraway’s situated
knowledge (1991). It is (for a certain period of time) considered a better moral, political,
and even scientific standpoint than the patriarchal standpoint of traditional academic
studies. The standpoint theory also demands that one’s own standpoint and focus as well
as one’s own academic theorems be explicitly stated. However, this is not always the
case, even in archaeological studies that claim to be feminist.
In contrast to the above-mentioned approaches, feminist archaeology in general began to
subscribe to the opinion that preference cannot be given to any single standpoint. The
more feminist archaeology critically considered the dependency of research on context—
especially in the women’s studies that arose from second-wave feminism—the more it
questioned its own approaches; ‘a purely feminist approach can lead us into the same
trap as androcentrism’ (Moore and Scott 1997: 251–2; see also Müller Clemm 2001; Wylie
1992; Engelstad 2007).
Gender archaeology
The concentration on women and female themes was, from about 1990 onwards, followed
by an extensive gendering of the past. The basic theoretical premise here is the funda
mental distinction between sex and gender. This premise was first introduced by Conkey
and Spector (1984) with the explicit use of the term ‘gender’ in the (published) archaeo
logical discussion. ‘Sex’ is understood here as the strictly biological-body aspect of gen
der, whereas the term ‘gender’ is used for all aspects not directly related to the body (e.g.
tasks, status, depictions, ownership, or economic significance), i.e. those that are regard
ed as social constructs (Conkey and Spector 1984; Conkey and Gero 1991: 8–23; Nelson
1997: 15–27; Gilchrist 1999: 9–14; Stig Sørensen 2000: 41–59; Brumfield 2006). Gender
archaeology thus reaches back to the fundamental cultural and social conditionality of
masculinity and femininity as formulated by Simone de Beauvoir (de Beauvoir 1949).
This stands in contrast to the usually unspoken premise of the innate and immutable na
ture of the sexes in cultural history, processual, and (mainly) post-processual archaeology
(for a general summary, see e.g. Pyburn 2004). The implicit assumption that prehistoric
societies can be divided by an unchangeable man/woman dichotomy into a feminine and a
masculine sphere is present in innumerable investigations. From the earliest days of ar
chaeology, burials were very often attributed to one sex or the other based on the accom
panying grave goods (see examples in Sofaer and Stig Sørensen 2013: 528f.), and activi
ties were routinely attributed to women or men without any archaeological proof. A posi
tive counterexample in the vein of gender archaeology should be mentioned here Janet D.
Spector introduces her article ‘What this awl means’ (1993) by a deliberately subjective
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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narrative about an awl found in one of her excavations, and then gradually reveals the
written, pictorial, and archaeological sources that led to her conclusion.
When gender is no longer considered as immutable but rather as a social construct, a
vast new field of study is opened up, because the gender relations in each period, each
culture, and each region have to be studied separately. In Great Britain and Scandinavia,
gender archaeology was sometimes considered part of post-processual archaeology (En
gelstad 2007: 218f.; Lozano Rubio 2011). However, its roots mainly lie in the feminist crit
icism of science (Engelstad 1991; Stig Sørensen 1991: 121f.; Lozano Rubio 2011). Howev
er, the influence of post-processual archaeology is probably responsible for the increasing
perception of gender as something variable, which can develop (but not necessarily
change) in the course of a person’s life, depending on several factors. Children in particu
lar, but also older people, thus become much more visible in archaeological research (En
gelstad 2007). In the course of time, there was an increasing awareness of further differ
entiations in archaeological gender studies, for example age, ethnicity, religion, class, or
sexuality. Gender is thus not only ‘a code word for women, and gendered archaeology is
not another way of finding women in prehistory disguised with a more neutral and inclu
sive term’, as pointed out by Sarah M. Nelson (1997: 15). Gender archaeology is also a
much broader field than the term at first suggests. If gender is considered in connection
with various other social factors, people from the past become visible, where previously
only artefacts, typologies, dates, symbols, developments, discourses, or influences were
investigated. This ‘peopling’ of the past was an important feminist agenda (Dommasnes
and Kleppe 1985: 1; Wicker 2010). Gender archaeology thus not only claims to be a spe
cialized subject within archaeology, but also aspires to change and improve archaeology
by a more realistic understanding of the past in general (Nelson 1997: 22–7; Brumfield
2006; Engelstad 2007). The extent to which gender studies are, and should be, also femi
nist archaeology is viewed in different ways, but is seen positively by a majority of female
authors (Gilchrist 1991; Engelstad 2007; Lozano Rubio 2011: 21).
Some theoretical studies and many case studies in gender archaeology assume—some ex
plicitly, others more subconsciously—that gender was an essential differentiation factor in
(almost) every archaeological culture. It is often also assumed that this is reflected in bur
ial customs in a way that is visible today (e.g. Sofaer and Stig Sørensen 2013). In some
studies, the possibility of more than two genders is discussed (e.g. Lesick 1997; Gilchrist
1999), but in most cases the assumption is (more or less implicitly) that there are just two
genders, with specific features that can change in the course of a person’s life but which
basically remain stable throughout life. Case studies are based mainly on cemeteries,
which are often understood as a direct reflection of gender relations among the living (ex
amples in Hodson 1990; Derks 1997; Halsall 1998; Burmeister 2000; Effros 2000; Brandt
and Koch 1996; Arnold and Wicker 2002; Brather 2005; Nordholz 2015). Many studies
analyse only grave goods and rarely consider other aspects of the burials. In most cases,
the determination of the biological sex of the deceased is based on an osteological exami
nation of the skeleton. In a few cases, only statistical methods are used.
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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These case studies are mainly based on traditional positivist presuppositions (Wylie 2006;
Lozano Rubio 2011: 24–8). On the other hand, these, and the often dichotomous interpre
tation of gender, sometimes make gender studies in archaeology the object of criticism
(e.g. Arnold and Wicker 2002; Sofaer 2006; Sofaer and Stig Sørensen 2013). There is, in
particular, a criticism in this connection that in the absence of an anthropological deter
mination of gender, or if the grave goods are not gender-specific, a large number of the
graves in a cemetery do not provide the data necessary for an analysis. Nevertheless, the
remaining graves, which do permit an analysis but represent only a fraction of the ceme
tery and thus only a fraction of the community, are often used to draw conclusions re
garding the community as a whole (see Burmeister 2000: 210f.).
Postmodern and poststructural approaches: doing gender
More recently, from about the end of the 1990s, the fundamental challenge to biological
gender, especially by Judith Butler (Butler 1990; 1993; 1997; 2004), has influenced the
formulation of archaeological theories (Perry and Joyce 2005). In Butler’s interpretation,
the factor ‘sex’ is not a biological given but is instead discursively produced, and gender
dichotomy is a social construct that serves to create and stabilize systems of dominance
and power. This viewpoint affects the social sciences in the concept of ‘doing gender’:
through daily activities and social practices, gender is constantly (re)constructed and is
actively formed by the person in question (Meskell 1998; Kessel and Signori 2000¸ Stig
Sørensen 2000; Wesely 2000; Sofaer 2006). ‘Natural’, i.e. biological, differences between
the sexes in daily life are here almost completely negated or seen as not relevant for real
gender relations. All differences between the sexes, whether as a proven fact or as an ac
cepted norm, seem almost exclusively culturally determined. Moreover, emphasis is
placed on the internal differences within each sex as well as overlapping areas and simi
larities shared by men and women.
Given these fundamental challenges, some archaeologists wonder whether gender is even
a valid research category (Hjørungdal 1994; Alberti 2005; Sofaer 2006), and demand that
the binary approach in traditional archaeology and some gender studies be abandoned. A
specific question is whether social groups should still be called ‘male’ or ‘female’ even
when they correlate to a statistically relevant extent with physical differences. Unlike
many case studies in (earlier) gender research, articles influenced by Butler emphasize
the possibility that categories other than sex were of greater relevance when deciding
types of burials and grave goods. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the number of gen
ders, the reliability of sex attribution, and changes in gender roles in the course of a life
could have been different in each culture.
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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Common features: masculinity and queer stud
ies, archaeology of the body
Feminist archaeology arose out of (among other things) the criticism of androcentrism in
archaeological research. But is androcentric archaeology really about men? Or does it
present a narrow, stereotyped image of a man as being the everyday reality of all men?
Given the often nonexistent awareness of gender questions in traditional archaeology, the
demand was raised that men should be studied using the approaches and methods of fem
inist archaeology in order to make visible those men who did not conform to the cliché of
the prehistoric hunter, prince, or warrior (Knapp 1998; Alberti 2006; Skogstrand 2010;
2011). Depending on the period, such depictions are seen an accurate description of only
a small—or very small—proportion of all the men living at the time, and they apply only to
the socially dominant classes.
This approach in archaeology evolved, in part, from the concept of hegemonic masculini
ty, introduced into the social sciences and gender studies by the sociologist Raewyn Con
nell (1995). It describes how individual men in a specific society are socially advantaged
or disadvantaged by stereotype depictions of masculinity. The authors expect such a mas
culinist approaches in archaeology—as in gender studies—to provide a more realistic pic
ture of the past, one not limited to stereotypes.
There are also points of contact between queer theory and feminism that are relevant for
archaeology. Starting in the 1990s, with clear reference to the philosophy of Judith Butler,
queer theory first of all questioned the often subconsciously postulated ‘natural’ connec
tion between social roles, sexual orientation, and (biological) sex, but soon extended its
critical approach to questioning the meaning of the concepts ‘normal’ and ‘normative’
and determining what positions of power and claims to power are linked to these con
cepts: an approach which can be found in feminist archaeology (Praetzellis 2015: 85–92)
and also in numerous articles that provide reasons for a queer archaeology (e.g. Dowson
2000; Terendy et al. 2009; Blackmore 2011; Alberti 2013).
Numerous points of contact with feminist archaeology also exist in the archaeology of the
body, which has been developed in the last twenty years (e.g. Meskell 1996; 1998; Hami
lakis et al. 2002; Borić and Robb 2008; Tarlow and Nilsson Stutz 2013). Here, the relation
between biology and culture is also addressed in detail, and the authors often refer to
gender archaeology. In the more detailed engagement with the body, it again becomes
clear that the apparently biological basis of gender dichotomy, too, has more points of
overlap, transition, and ambiguity than is often realized (Sofaer and Stig Sørensen 2013).
Moreover, the skeletons of deceased persons show just how much their bodies were
marked by their way of life.
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A glance at our own institutions: equity issues,
language and perceived image
Closely connected with the demand that women be given more responsibility in archaeo
logical research was the analysis of androcentric or male bias in our own institutions.
While women’s studies and the analysis of gender theories in archaeology started rather
late, roles and opportunities in archaeology as a profession were addressed somewhat
earlier, in Scandinavia and the USA by the 1970s (Engelstad, Mandt, and Næss 1994; Nel
son 1997: 39–48; Stig Sørensen 2000: 20–24, 31f:; Conkey 2003). On the other hand, the
investigation of our own institutions is the one aspect of feminist archaeology that has
hardly entered the mainstream of the profession. The questions discussed here include
professional opportunities for both women and men, the perceived image of professional
archaeologists, the distribution of tasks in archaeological institutions, the different re
search priorities and occupations of female and male archaeologists, as well as the pro
motional practices adopted by line managers and university teaching staff. Various stud
ies show that in many countries and sub-disciplines of archaeology, women are still clear
ly in the minority when it comes to permanent, properly remunerated positions, especial
ly managerial positions, although the proportion of female students has been high, and
even very high, for decades (e.g. Claassen 1994; Diaz-Andreu and Stig Sørensen 1998;
Aitchinson 2009; Fries and Gutsmiedl-Schümann 2013b).
Some authors are particularly critical of the fact that a disproportionately high value is
attached to fieldwork, especially during training or university studies and thus in their
professional socialization as archaeologists, while at the same time female students are
systematically disadvantaged by the prevailing masculine norms (Wylie 2007: 213–14;
Tomášková 2007). Power dimensions and the (expected) behaviour patterns of men and
women lead therefore to gendered dimensions of power relations in the discipline. This
also ties in with the fact that fieldwork was the archaeological activity that remained
closed to women longest (Fries and Gutsmiedl-Schümann 2013b: 21). In addition to equi
ty issues, and again for reasons of feminist self-image, some authors have addressed oth
er aspects of gender relations in archaeology. For example, Julia K. Koch (2009) and Katie
Evans (1990) investigated the language used to describe women and men in the profes
sion. Extensive investigations, above all in German-speaking areas, showed that there
was also a distinct difference in the way women and men were presented in visual depic
tions of personalities in prehistory and classical antiquity (Röder 2004; Allinger 2007;
Mainka-Mehling 2008).
Both gender archaeology and feminist archaeology are lively and varied areas of re
search, subject to constant further development. Feminist theories are also constantly de
veloping and thus offer ever new sources of inspiration for archaeology. Nevertheless,
which of the feminist ideas and thoughts will be adopted in future in archaeological re
search and its institutions will continue to depend on the interest and determination of in
Feminist archaeologies and gender studies
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dividuals: the flowering—and sometimes rampantly sprawling—garden of feminist archae
ology should thus continue to change, blossom, and grow.
Suggested reading
Claassen, C. (ed.) 1994. Women in Archaeology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Conkey, M. W., and Spector, J. D. (eds) 1984. Archaeology and the study of gender. Ad
vances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 1–38.
Díaz-Andreu, M., and Stig Sørensen, M. L. (eds) 1998. Excavating Women: A History of
Women in European Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Dommasnes, L. H., Hjørungdal, T., Montón-Subìas, S., Sánchez Romero, M., and Wicker
N. L. (eds) 2010. Situation Gender in European Archaeologies. Budapest: Archaeolingua.
Gero, J. M., and Conkey, M. W. (eds) 1991. Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehis
tory. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gilchrist, R. 1999. Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past. London: Routledge.
Montón-Subías, S., and Sánchez-Romero, M. 2008. Engendering Social Dynamics: The Ar
chaeology of Maintenance Activities. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Nelson, S. M. (ed.) 2006. Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham, MD: AltaMira
Press 2006.
Pyburn, K. A. (ed.) 2004. Ungendering Civilization: Reinterpreting the Archaeological
Record. London: Routledge.
Sofaer, J., and Stig Sørensen, M. L. 2013. Death and gender. In Tarlow and Nilsson Stutz
(2013: 527–541).
Stig Sørensen, M. L. 2000. Gender Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wylie, A. 2007. Doing archaeology as a feminist: introduction. Journal of Archaeological
Method and Theory 14: 209–16.
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Jana Esther Fries
Base Oldenburg, Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments
Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann
Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology, Freie Universität Berlin
