May 21, 2012 • 25 mins
Where are the women in archaeology? What is the 'Indiana Jones effect'? Join Caroline and Cristen as they explore the lives of Agatha Christie and other notable women in archaeology.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today we're talking
(00:21):
about a topic that is very near and dear to
my heart, which is archaeology. I am a big geek
and I did not know this about you. Yeah, well,
you learn all sorts of things about me. I read
romance novels. I wanted to be an archaeologist, and it's
it's all because of Indiana Jones. Let's be honest. Yeah
it was. Yeah. As a kid, I watched a Temple
(00:42):
of Doom. I know it's not everybody's favorite, get over it.
I watched Temple of Doom over and over and over again,
and I was like, how well I knew when to
cover my eyes when he ripped the guy's heart out
and when they're crawling through that roach cave. Yeah, well,
you know, I'm afraid of bugs. I don't know if
it's because of that the coach cave, but yeah, I
was convinced that I was going to be an archaeologist.
(01:03):
And I was convinced of this up and through up
until my freshman year of college, and I took an
anthropology class. You know, I went to college is as
an undecided like many like many kids do. Quick question,
did you wear a lot of khaki in these days?
I didn't shoot shoot Now I wear camo instead. No.
(01:25):
I I took an anthropology class. I was determined that
I was going to become an archaeologist, and I was all.
I was with it when you learned about monkeys, and
I was. I was there. And then we got to
the archaeology section and I fell asleep every day in class. Oh,
it just wasn't as interesting. And I guess once you
find out all the nitty gritty details behind, like your
dream job, it might not seem as appealing. And your
(01:49):
professor did not look like Harrison Ford. No, shockingly no,
and neither did my t A. But I can tell
you the difference between a boy monkey head and a
girl monkey head. So there's that. Okay, Yeah, that's all
I got though. Well, now you know even more about archaeology, though, Caroline,
because you have dug up yep, you dug up a
(02:11):
history of women in archaeology. Yeah, and if I had
become an archaeologist, I would have been a rare breed,
part of a rare breed. Indeed, and books on women
in archaeology are also rare, and we are pulling from
three primary books. Uh, this one isn't so much article based,
but more based on books. Let's go ahead and tossed
out the three books that we are going to be
(02:33):
discussing today, first of which would be Ladies of the Field,
Early Women Archaeologists and their Search for Adventure by Amanda Adams.
Then we have Excavating Women, a history of women in
European archaeology, and the third is Women in Archaeology by
Cheryl Classen. She writes the intro was sort of a
(02:53):
big group of essays about famous lady archaeologists. So right
off the bat, we can go ahead and tell you
that women do not have a very strong presence in archaeology.
Maybe perhaps because of an Indiana Jones effect. Maybe not sure.
I don't know. He was handsome, he was, I was
ready to go hang out with him. But even though
(03:14):
women comprise a small percentage of archaeologists, they have been
digging up all those artifacts since it was first created
as a discipline in the nineteenth century. Yeah, and really
you can think of of anybody men or women who
were part of the field during the nineteenth century as pioneers.
(03:35):
And one woman who who comes to mind is Joanna
Mestor if she's German, who despite not being able to
go to university in Germany, built an academic career on
self study and she actually became the first female museum
director in Germany in one And it was a lot
of women like this who might not have had a
formal education at first, who taught themselves all they needed
(03:56):
to know, or they worked alongside their husbands or fathers
to find out everything there was in the field. Yeah,
it wasn't uncommon for a woman like Messdorff to not
have a college education because women being permitted to university
lectures really wasn't formally permitted in places like Great Britain Norway.
In Denmark until the eighteen seventies. Cambridge, for instance, granted
(04:19):
women full membership in nineteen but it had established an
all female college in the meantime um But at the
same time, upper class educated women especially were still taught
Latin and Greek, which ties in a lot with the
interest in archaeology. Italy had become a popular destination site
(04:41):
as the you know, the seat of the home of
the classics um and then there was also this rise
in um an interest in Egyptology in the nineteenth century
as well. Yeah, granted, a lot of the the excavations
and expeditions that were going on in Egypt were kind
of looting, but there was still an interest, even if
it was in stealing gold. But after World War One,
(05:04):
more women started going to college. More women also started
entering the field of archaeology, but a lot of them
were going about it a different way than men were.
Instead of going on digs and leading these projects, a
lot of women were getting into the field through museum
work and research, which we shouldn't. I mean, that's not
a bad thing. They contributed quite a bit, but they're
(05:24):
just they had to sort of go about it in
more of an indirect way. Yeah, I thought it was interesting.
There was a quote from this coming from nineteen thirty
three saying that I think this was from a male
museum curator saying that women are specially suited to museum
work by their love of the beautiful, their adaptability, and
their patients In detailed work, so academia, the more academic
(05:46):
side of archaeology, and actually going on those digs more
closed off. But women were come to the museum, handled
this pottery and jewelry. You like findings there, something sparkling,
you have soft hands. Yeah. Talk about but Cheryl class
and who we mentioned at the beginning, looks at archaeology
through the lens of gender, and she talks about how
(06:08):
really until the sixties, upper class educated white women were
sort of repelled from the field, particularly going out on
digs and whatnot. And in the US in the nineteen thirties,
she says that there was a class and race based
definition of femininity that limited women's involvement in the field.
And during this time, while more women were getting involved
(06:29):
in archaeology digs, things like that, it was sort of limited,
particularly in the US two more unskilled labor. Yeah, and
often that was had racist undertones to it because it
was really only open to black women. I didn't know
this um excavation came to be considered appropriate work for
(06:50):
unemployed women, especially women of color, in new deal projects
in the nineteen thirties and the nineteen forties. So there
was this issue of femininity. But only if you're an
upper class white woman. If you're a lower class woman,
black or white, it's all right if you get your
hands throw out in the fields. The attitude uh now
class and says women constitute still a very small percent.
(07:13):
In the nineties, She said that only of the archaeologists
in the top thirty academic departments were women, and many
work in small contract companies or have only research affiliations
with departments and museums. Basically, this means that women end
up having few role models of their same gender, and
that leads to poor networks essentially. And this reflects a
(07:34):
lot from the conversations that we've had about women in
sciences and the STEM courses science, technology, engineering, and math.
We see that reflected um in archaeology as well. And
this is coming from a two thousand eleven article on
Biblical archaeology dot org. Jenny Ebling, an associate professor of
archaeology at the University of Evansville in Indiana, pointed out
(07:58):
that in the Big Bolical Archaeology Reviews, which Caroline, I'm
sure you have a subscription to that iolutely in their
two thousand eleven list of big opportunities in Israel naturally
because it's biblical archaeology. Only two of the twenty two
excavations were either directed or co directed by women, and
she also found that fewer than a third of the
(08:19):
licenses granted by the Israel Antiquities Authority of two thousand
eleven were issued to female archaeologists, and she's not entirely
sure why, but as comes up so often in this podcast,
there is a significant gender gap. There is and classen
like we mentioned, who looks at archaeology not necessarily from
(08:40):
just being a science field, and looks at it as
a gender sort of it, the whole gendered aspect of it,
and women's involvement. She says that homophobia is a part
of why women have not been involved, and there was
this whole issue of, like we said, femininity, traditional femininity,
and that if you are a woman who only wanted
to pursue education, but wanted to pursue a quote unquote
(09:03):
athletic pursuit like archaeology, you were non feminine. You were
a non woman, And so there was this whole idea
that connected uh feminist, the feminist movement or feminism to lesbianism,
and so you were just this total odd ball if
you wanted to participate in something that was dirty and outside. Well,
(09:24):
and this is coming from this. Nineteen o four, a
director of Denmark's National Museum said, the work of the
monuments of our fatherland is, according to its nature, men's work,
and it demands the exercise of physical strength and stamina,
which cannot be expected to be found amongst women. It's
that outdoor labor that's involved with um, the digging, which
(09:45):
is maybe why still you know, we don't see a
lot of female dig directors. But we are in the laboratories.
I was about to say laboratory. We are in the laboratories. Uh.
In the museum's working with pottery, textiles, jewelry and more
special lies um fields. Right. And one one person who
still makes people angry is Harvard professor Edward H. Clark,
(10:06):
who was working in the mid to late eighteen hundreds
women watch your ovaries. He said that mental activity interfered
with ovulation, so women should focus on their reproductive abilities.
The education of women creates a class of sexless humans.
Oh my god, it upsets the whole system. If you're
not a manly man or a girly girl, we don't
(10:28):
know what you are. Well, I think that we can
say that since Edward old Ed was saying this in
the mid to late eighteen hundreds, I think women, modern
women have proven him wrong. We are still producing women
having sexual intercourse and careers. It's incredible. And we go outside. Yes,
sometimes um and glass In talks about archaeology and how
(10:50):
it combines athleticism and intelligence, those two traditionally male gendered characteristics. Yeah,
which ended up dissuading some women from pursuing it. I mean,
there could have been some women out there who thought
going to Egypt and digging up a treasure trove, that
sounds really interesting, But I better stay home and just
do my knitting or think about. I mean, the the
(11:12):
cultural icon of archaeology that we have is Indiana Jones.
And I'm not saying anything against Indiana Jones films. I
love them. I love them as a child. I will
watch them still today. But nevertheless, you know, it does
have that, you know, maybe the connotation of archaeology as
this masculine field where the women are just gorgeous vixens
(11:35):
and you know, well dressed curators exactly delicate things floating
through museums and my goodness. And there's nothing wrong with
the well dressed curator either. Absolutely not UM, But I
want to talk about some of our archaeology all stars,
these women who really paved the way for other women
to get involved in the field. I'm also imagining, like
(11:56):
you know, in in your college freshman dorm room, you
had lists of these women no no bands, or like
you know John Belushina's college T shirt, you had a
poster of let's say, Amelia Edwards, the godmother of Egyptology,
who was quite a gal. Yeah, she she was around
from eighteen thirty one to nineteen eighteen. Uh. Edwards was
(12:18):
definitely an independent woman thanks to no one will ever
say this again in modern history. She was independent and
financially secure thanks to her career as a journalist. That
would never apply anymore anyway. She was homeschooled from a
young age by a mother who avoided teaching her housework.
Her mother had it seemed like her mother had other
plans for her. She also never married, UM and one
(12:41):
of her great loves was Marian North, the botanical artist
for those of you out there familiar with her work. UM,
and she was also had a long term relationship with
Lucy Renshaw identified only as l in Edwards journal UM
and who accompanied her on some of her Middle East
travels and UM she come in eighteen seventy three to
(13:02):
Alexandria and became an expert on local archaeology and helped
found the Egypt Exploration Fund in eighteen eighty two. Edwards
is really credited during this time that she helped found
this group UM of making archaeology accessible to the common person.
She always encouraged her students to write about archaeology in
(13:23):
a way that was accessible to other people, and so
her work for the fund involved raising money, writing articles,
and lecturing, and she ended up receiving honorary degrees from
Columbia University, Smith College, and the College of the Sisters
of Bethany. So clearly people out there were like, oh, well,
I guess she's smart, even though she's a girl. I
guess we'll give her the stuff whatever. Whatever. Another notable
(13:47):
lady we should talk about, UM who teams up with
her husband in this case um Jane dou Lafoy. She
became known for her cross dressing so that she could
fight in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy and
she and her husband Marcel wanted to obviously after the
(14:08):
war ended, they wanted to reach the legendary site of Susa,
east of the Tigris River and home to an ancient city,
and hundreds of people flocked to help them excavate this site. Yeah,
Do Lafoy is really interesting. There's a picture of her
in in the book Ladies of the Field, and she's
kind of turned to the side in profile. She has
(14:28):
her hair chopped off, she's wearing men's clothing, and she
she has a striking resemblance. Might I say to one
young uh Dustin Hoffman? Really yeah, but um yeah, she
and her husband went trapsing around the Middle East. Uh,
they loved it. She she really was dedicated to the
whole idea of and covering this city in Susa. And
(14:52):
they did. They found a lot. They found like fifty
four boxes worth, big large crates, not just boxes worth
of stuff that they ended up taking back with them
to France. And she she was no shrinking violet. She
wasn't just sitting back, you know, being fanned with palm fronds. Now,
she was overseeing the dig. She had people reporting to
her aunt. She oversaw every painstaking detail of excavating. Basically,
(15:17):
they were enameled bricks that were part of giant freezes
in the Palace of Darius, which was quite a big find.
And just to point out what a celebrity she became
at the time, um After coming back Stateside, the New
York Times reported that she received the authorization of the
government to appear in public in costume because she was
(15:37):
so well known at this point. For her what would
be considered cross dressing, which really today would probably just
be like wearing slacks in a shirt, right exactly. Yeah,
and the the it would just look like Dustin Hoffman. Yeah,
young Dustin Hoffman. Um. But they point out that the
privilege of being able to wear men's clothing around in
(15:58):
the streets was normally reserved for the mentally ill or handy,
so this was a high honor. So it was a
high honor. And she she was pretty fashionable too. It's
not like she just wore any old pants. So so
in exchange for her doing things such as, oh, I
don't know, unearthing the Palace of Darius, people were like, well, uh,
you can wear pants. How about that? How about that?
(16:20):
Congratulations pants? Yeah. Well it's funny because that actually her
wearing men's clothing was not just about traveling easier, It
was about safety because a lot of the places that
she traveled in the Middle East she would not have
been able to pass through safely as a woman. And
and she even had to shave her head at one
point because the lights got so bad. Yeah, so they
(16:42):
got to somewhere were they They got to some palace
and the ruler was like, no, you're not a woman.
I don't She had a shaved head, was wearing pants.
He wouldn't believe her. Well, what about Kathleen Kenyon, what
can you tell me about her? Well, Kathleen Kenyon is
very famous. She actually and start out with any interest,
in particular in archaeology. Her interest was sparked when she
(17:04):
joined Gertrude Kayton Thompson on the nine All Women Excavation
of Great Zimbabwe as a photographer, and she went on
to work at Roman Britain's third largest city, vrule Meum,
vrule Meum. It's one of yes with with Sir Mortimer Wheeler,
and together they developed the Wheeler Kenyon method, which still
(17:26):
influences excavation methods, and it had to do with stratigraphic analysis.
Instead of just digging any old place, you would pay
attention to the strata of the dirt, the layers of
vertical layers of the dirt. Well done. And just for
a few examples of some things that she dug up,
perhaps using that very Wheeler Kenyan method. Just before World
(17:51):
War Two, she excavated the Jewelry Wall at Lester, whose
public baths are a rare example of civil Roman architecture.
And she was also the first acting director of the
Institute of Archaeology of the University College of London, founded
in nineteen thirty seven to provide instruction in proper excavation techniques.
(18:12):
And what Kenyan is possibly the most famous for is
her excavation of the ancient city of Jericho, which she
uncovered the first walled city full with houses and courtyards
dating back to the Neolithic era. So this was a
huge fine because one area they found it was like
this huge staircase along the wall. It made me think
of Monty pythons for the life of Brian, that whole thing. Anyway,
(18:34):
it's older than some of the pyramids, so yeah, good job.
Kathleen Kenyon. Another woman that we have to talk about
is Hannah Marie Wormington. She was around from nineteen fourteen
to nineteen She was the first woman admitted to the
Department of Anthropology at Harvard who also graduated technically. She
was the second woman admitted overall, but she was admitted
(18:55):
to Harvard in nineteen thirty seven and received her pH
d in nineteen fifty for and according to her obituary
in the New York Times, Warmington's was an expert on
the Paleo Indian period and she was affiliated with the
Denver Museum of Natural History for nearly sixty year of
and to around out this uh this list of notable
(19:15):
female archaeologists, we have Lithuanian Maria Gim Buddhists whose focus
was on Indo European studies in the Bronze and Neolithic periods.
And she was notable because of the way that she
brought together linguistic and archaeological knowledge right and this she
took her study of basically in her in her biography
(19:39):
they talk about how it's sort of inappropriate for archaeologists
to get too deep into people's culture, maybe to assume
too much about their religion and whatnot, but she kept
finding all of those goddess figures, you know, the round
women or whatever. And she she basically developed this, this
theory of the goddess, and she saw the email form
(20:00):
rendered in thousands of images and said that it reflected
the centrality of women in religious and cultural life. Basically
said like, look, all these people were worshiping women. And
not only was her theory a big deal, and her
two books on the goddess were a big deal, but
her whole theory became such a huge deal to feminists
and women and environmentalists and nature worshipers and uh, the
(20:25):
primordial deity for a Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors in her biography,
says was female, reflecting the sovereignty of motherhood. And I
can imagine, I mean, if she's coming out with this
in the mid twentieth century, it probably was a pretty
revolutionary idea for people who probably conceptualized a lot of
times we conceptualized in the Western world, at least in
(20:46):
Judeo Christianity conceptualizes uh, you know, gods as masculine. So
that was probably pretty groundbreaking at the time. Um. And
one final name who will be much more familiar probable
way to listeners is She was not an archaeologist, but
archaeology was highly influential for her because her husband, Um,
(21:08):
was an archaeologist in the Middle East. Agatha Christie, the
famous mystery writer. She spent thirty years assisting her husband's
work in the Middle East, UM, and she would write
her books in between. And hence you have archaeology themed
Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile Goath.
So those are some names that I bet a lot
(21:30):
of listeners haven't heard from. And I really, really really
hope that we have some archaeologists out there listening. And Um,
if it's male archaeologist, you have women working with you,
women in the field, what's it like? Very curious to know,
because I feel like we, you know, we don't really
talk about archaeology all that much. I mean, we'll hear
about King tut every now and then. But this idea
(21:54):
of you know, figuring out how the discipline even came
to be and women's role in it is a pretty
interesting stuff. Yeah, exactly. So I'm glad that you wanted
to be one as a child so that I could
learn more. And I just wanted one final thing about
my freshman year experience. So I so badly wanted to
do this. I thought it was going to be so cool,
and I remember telling my my slightly stuck up roommate
(22:17):
about it, and she was like, I mean, what is
possibly left to find? I I just want everyone to
let that soak in. She actually said what is left
to find? And so every time I see something on
the news about something being discovered somewhere, I think of her.
You know what you should have said, there's space, space archaeology, excavation,
(22:42):
moon castles. So now that you're thinking about moon castles,
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(23:25):
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Limo and Zoe, I do agree with that. I find
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(24:08):
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(24:29):
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I learned about in library school. Robbie Harris has several
books that explain things to kids in a clear way,
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(24:50):
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(25:11):
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(25:33):
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two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today we're talking
(00:21):
about a topic that is very near and dear to
my heart, which is archaeology. I am a big geek
and I did not know this about you. Yeah, well,
you learn all sorts of things about me. I read
romance novels. I wanted to be an archaeologist, and it's
it's all because of Indiana Jones. Let's be honest. Yeah
it was. Yeah. As a kid, I watched a Temple
(00:42):
of Doom. I know it's not everybody's favorite, get over it.
I watched Temple of Doom over and over and over again,
and I was like, how well I knew when to
cover my eyes when he ripped the guy's heart out
and when they're crawling through that roach cave. Yeah, well,
you know, I'm afraid of bugs. I don't know if
it's because of that the coach cave, but yeah, I
was convinced that I was going to be an archaeologist.
(01:03):
And I was convinced of this up and through up
until my freshman year of college, and I took an
anthropology class. You know, I went to college is as
an undecided like many like many kids do. Quick question,
did you wear a lot of khaki in these days?
I didn't shoot shoot Now I wear camo instead. No.
(01:25):
I I took an anthropology class. I was determined that
I was going to become an archaeologist, and I was all.
I was with it when you learned about monkeys, and
I was. I was there. And then we got to
the archaeology section and I fell asleep every day in class. Oh,
it just wasn't as interesting. And I guess once you
find out all the nitty gritty details behind, like your
dream job, it might not seem as appealing. And your
(01:49):
professor did not look like Harrison Ford. No, shockingly no,
and neither did my t A. But I can tell
you the difference between a boy monkey head and a
girl monkey head. So there's that. Okay, Yeah, that's all
I got though. Well, now you know even more about archaeology, though, Caroline,
because you have dug up yep, you dug up a
(02:11):
history of women in archaeology. Yeah, and if I had
become an archaeologist, I would have been a rare breed,
part of a rare breed. Indeed, and books on women
in archaeology are also rare, and we are pulling from
three primary books. Uh, this one isn't so much article based,
but more based on books. Let's go ahead and tossed
out the three books that we are going to be
(02:33):
discussing today, first of which would be Ladies of the Field,
Early Women Archaeologists and their Search for Adventure by Amanda Adams.
Then we have Excavating Women, a history of women in
European archaeology, and the third is Women in Archaeology by
Cheryl Classen. She writes the intro was sort of a
(02:53):
big group of essays about famous lady archaeologists. So right
off the bat, we can go ahead and tell you
that women do not have a very strong presence in archaeology.
Maybe perhaps because of an Indiana Jones effect. Maybe not sure.
I don't know. He was handsome, he was, I was
ready to go hang out with him. But even though
(03:14):
women comprise a small percentage of archaeologists, they have been
digging up all those artifacts since it was first created
as a discipline in the nineteenth century. Yeah, and really
you can think of of anybody men or women who
were part of the field during the nineteenth century as pioneers.
(03:35):
And one woman who who comes to mind is Joanna
Mestor if she's German, who despite not being able to
go to university in Germany, built an academic career on
self study and she actually became the first female museum
director in Germany in one And it was a lot
of women like this who might not have had a
formal education at first, who taught themselves all they needed
(03:56):
to know, or they worked alongside their husbands or fathers
to find out everything there was in the field. Yeah,
it wasn't uncommon for a woman like Messdorff to not
have a college education because women being permitted to university
lectures really wasn't formally permitted in places like Great Britain Norway.
In Denmark until the eighteen seventies. Cambridge, for instance, granted
(04:19):
women full membership in nineteen but it had established an
all female college in the meantime um But at the
same time, upper class educated women especially were still taught
Latin and Greek, which ties in a lot with the
interest in archaeology. Italy had become a popular destination site
(04:41):
as the you know, the seat of the home of
the classics um and then there was also this rise
in um an interest in Egyptology in the nineteenth century
as well. Yeah, granted, a lot of the the excavations
and expeditions that were going on in Egypt were kind
of looting, but there was still an interest, even if
it was in stealing gold. But after World War One,
(05:04):
more women started going to college. More women also started
entering the field of archaeology, but a lot of them
were going about it a different way than men were.
Instead of going on digs and leading these projects, a
lot of women were getting into the field through museum
work and research, which we shouldn't. I mean, that's not
a bad thing. They contributed quite a bit, but they're
(05:24):
just they had to sort of go about it in
more of an indirect way. Yeah, I thought it was interesting.
There was a quote from this coming from nineteen thirty
three saying that I think this was from a male
museum curator saying that women are specially suited to museum
work by their love of the beautiful, their adaptability, and
their patients In detailed work, so academia, the more academic
(05:46):
side of archaeology, and actually going on those digs more
closed off. But women were come to the museum, handled
this pottery and jewelry. You like findings there, something sparkling,
you have soft hands. Yeah. Talk about but Cheryl class
and who we mentioned at the beginning, looks at archaeology
through the lens of gender, and she talks about how
(06:08):
really until the sixties, upper class educated white women were
sort of repelled from the field, particularly going out on
digs and whatnot. And in the US in the nineteen thirties,
she says that there was a class and race based
definition of femininity that limited women's involvement in the field.
And during this time, while more women were getting involved
(06:29):
in archaeology digs, things like that, it was sort of limited,
particularly in the US two more unskilled labor. Yeah, and
often that was had racist undertones to it because it
was really only open to black women. I didn't know
this um excavation came to be considered appropriate work for
(06:50):
unemployed women, especially women of color, in new deal projects
in the nineteen thirties and the nineteen forties. So there
was this issue of femininity. But only if you're an
upper class white woman. If you're a lower class woman,
black or white, it's all right if you get your
hands throw out in the fields. The attitude uh now
class and says women constitute still a very small percent.
(07:13):
In the nineties, She said that only of the archaeologists
in the top thirty academic departments were women, and many
work in small contract companies or have only research affiliations
with departments and museums. Basically, this means that women end
up having few role models of their same gender, and
that leads to poor networks essentially. And this reflects a
(07:34):
lot from the conversations that we've had about women in
sciences and the STEM courses science, technology, engineering, and math.
We see that reflected um in archaeology as well. And
this is coming from a two thousand eleven article on
Biblical archaeology dot org. Jenny Ebling, an associate professor of
archaeology at the University of Evansville in Indiana, pointed out
(07:58):
that in the Big Bolical Archaeology Reviews, which Caroline, I'm
sure you have a subscription to that iolutely in their
two thousand eleven list of big opportunities in Israel naturally
because it's biblical archaeology. Only two of the twenty two
excavations were either directed or co directed by women, and
she also found that fewer than a third of the
(08:19):
licenses granted by the Israel Antiquities Authority of two thousand
eleven were issued to female archaeologists, and she's not entirely
sure why, but as comes up so often in this podcast,
there is a significant gender gap. There is and classen
like we mentioned, who looks at archaeology not necessarily from
(08:40):
just being a science field, and looks at it as
a gender sort of it, the whole gendered aspect of it,
and women's involvement. She says that homophobia is a part
of why women have not been involved, and there was
this whole issue of, like we said, femininity, traditional femininity,
and that if you are a woman who only wanted
to pursue education, but wanted to pursue a quote unquote
(09:03):
athletic pursuit like archaeology, you were non feminine. You were
a non woman, And so there was this whole idea
that connected uh feminist, the feminist movement or feminism to lesbianism,
and so you were just this total odd ball if
you wanted to participate in something that was dirty and outside. Well,
(09:24):
and this is coming from this. Nineteen o four, a
director of Denmark's National Museum said, the work of the
monuments of our fatherland is, according to its nature, men's work,
and it demands the exercise of physical strength and stamina,
which cannot be expected to be found amongst women. It's
that outdoor labor that's involved with um, the digging, which
(09:45):
is maybe why still you know, we don't see a
lot of female dig directors. But we are in the laboratories.
I was about to say laboratory. We are in the laboratories. Uh.
In the museum's working with pottery, textiles, jewelry and more
special lies um fields. Right. And one one person who
still makes people angry is Harvard professor Edward H. Clark,
(10:06):
who was working in the mid to late eighteen hundreds
women watch your ovaries. He said that mental activity interfered
with ovulation, so women should focus on their reproductive abilities.
The education of women creates a class of sexless humans.
Oh my god, it upsets the whole system. If you're
not a manly man or a girly girl, we don't
(10:28):
know what you are. Well, I think that we can
say that since Edward old Ed was saying this in
the mid to late eighteen hundreds, I think women, modern
women have proven him wrong. We are still producing women
having sexual intercourse and careers. It's incredible. And we go outside. Yes,
sometimes um and glass In talks about archaeology and how
(10:50):
it combines athleticism and intelligence, those two traditionally male gendered characteristics. Yeah,
which ended up dissuading some women from pursuing it. I mean,
there could have been some women out there who thought
going to Egypt and digging up a treasure trove, that
sounds really interesting, But I better stay home and just
do my knitting or think about. I mean, the the
(11:12):
cultural icon of archaeology that we have is Indiana Jones.
And I'm not saying anything against Indiana Jones films. I
love them. I love them as a child. I will
watch them still today. But nevertheless, you know, it does
have that, you know, maybe the connotation of archaeology as
this masculine field where the women are just gorgeous vixens
(11:35):
and you know, well dressed curators exactly delicate things floating
through museums and my goodness. And there's nothing wrong with
the well dressed curator either. Absolutely not UM, But I
want to talk about some of our archaeology all stars,
these women who really paved the way for other women
to get involved in the field. I'm also imagining, like
(11:56):
you know, in in your college freshman dorm room, you
had lists of these women no no bands, or like
you know John Belushina's college T shirt, you had a
poster of let's say, Amelia Edwards, the godmother of Egyptology,
who was quite a gal. Yeah, she she was around
from eighteen thirty one to nineteen eighteen. Uh. Edwards was
(12:18):
definitely an independent woman thanks to no one will ever
say this again in modern history. She was independent and
financially secure thanks to her career as a journalist. That
would never apply anymore anyway. She was homeschooled from a
young age by a mother who avoided teaching her housework.
Her mother had it seemed like her mother had other
plans for her. She also never married, UM and one
(12:41):
of her great loves was Marian North, the botanical artist
for those of you out there familiar with her work. UM,
and she was also had a long term relationship with
Lucy Renshaw identified only as l in Edwards journal UM
and who accompanied her on some of her Middle East
travels and UM she come in eighteen seventy three to
(13:02):
Alexandria and became an expert on local archaeology and helped
found the Egypt Exploration Fund in eighteen eighty two. Edwards
is really credited during this time that she helped found
this group UM of making archaeology accessible to the common person.
She always encouraged her students to write about archaeology in
(13:23):
a way that was accessible to other people, and so
her work for the fund involved raising money, writing articles,
and lecturing, and she ended up receiving honorary degrees from
Columbia University, Smith College, and the College of the Sisters
of Bethany. So clearly people out there were like, oh, well,
I guess she's smart, even though she's a girl. I
guess we'll give her the stuff whatever. Whatever. Another notable
(13:47):
lady we should talk about, UM who teams up with
her husband in this case um Jane dou Lafoy. She
became known for her cross dressing so that she could
fight in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy and
she and her husband Marcel wanted to obviously after the
(14:08):
war ended, they wanted to reach the legendary site of Susa,
east of the Tigris River and home to an ancient city,
and hundreds of people flocked to help them excavate this site. Yeah,
Do Lafoy is really interesting. There's a picture of her
in in the book Ladies of the Field, and she's
kind of turned to the side in profile. She has
(14:28):
her hair chopped off, she's wearing men's clothing, and she
she has a striking resemblance. Might I say to one
young uh Dustin Hoffman? Really yeah, but um yeah, she
and her husband went trapsing around the Middle East. Uh,
they loved it. She she really was dedicated to the
whole idea of and covering this city in Susa. And
(14:52):
they did. They found a lot. They found like fifty
four boxes worth, big large crates, not just boxes worth
of stuff that they ended up taking back with them
to France. And she she was no shrinking violet. She
wasn't just sitting back, you know, being fanned with palm fronds. Now,
she was overseeing the dig. She had people reporting to
her aunt. She oversaw every painstaking detail of excavating. Basically,
(15:17):
they were enameled bricks that were part of giant freezes
in the Palace of Darius, which was quite a big find.
And just to point out what a celebrity she became
at the time, um After coming back Stateside, the New
York Times reported that she received the authorization of the
government to appear in public in costume because she was
(15:37):
so well known at this point. For her what would
be considered cross dressing, which really today would probably just
be like wearing slacks in a shirt, right exactly. Yeah,
and the the it would just look like Dustin Hoffman. Yeah,
young Dustin Hoffman. Um. But they point out that the
privilege of being able to wear men's clothing around in
(15:58):
the streets was normally reserved for the mentally ill or handy,
so this was a high honor. So it was a
high honor. And she she was pretty fashionable too. It's
not like she just wore any old pants. So so
in exchange for her doing things such as, oh, I
don't know, unearthing the Palace of Darius, people were like, well, uh,
you can wear pants. How about that? How about that?
(16:20):
Congratulations pants? Yeah. Well it's funny because that actually her
wearing men's clothing was not just about traveling easier, It
was about safety because a lot of the places that
she traveled in the Middle East she would not have
been able to pass through safely as a woman. And
and she even had to shave her head at one
point because the lights got so bad. Yeah, so they
(16:42):
got to somewhere were they They got to some palace
and the ruler was like, no, you're not a woman.
I don't She had a shaved head, was wearing pants.
He wouldn't believe her. Well, what about Kathleen Kenyon, what
can you tell me about her? Well, Kathleen Kenyon is
very famous. She actually and start out with any interest,
in particular in archaeology. Her interest was sparked when she
(17:04):
joined Gertrude Kayton Thompson on the nine All Women Excavation
of Great Zimbabwe as a photographer, and she went on
to work at Roman Britain's third largest city, vrule Meum,
vrule Meum. It's one of yes with with Sir Mortimer Wheeler,
and together they developed the Wheeler Kenyon method, which still
(17:26):
influences excavation methods, and it had to do with stratigraphic analysis.
Instead of just digging any old place, you would pay
attention to the strata of the dirt, the layers of
vertical layers of the dirt. Well done. And just for
a few examples of some things that she dug up,
perhaps using that very Wheeler Kenyan method. Just before World
(17:51):
War Two, she excavated the Jewelry Wall at Lester, whose
public baths are a rare example of civil Roman architecture.
And she was also the first acting director of the
Institute of Archaeology of the University College of London, founded
in nineteen thirty seven to provide instruction in proper excavation techniques.
(18:12):
And what Kenyan is possibly the most famous for is
her excavation of the ancient city of Jericho, which she
uncovered the first walled city full with houses and courtyards
dating back to the Neolithic era. So this was a
huge fine because one area they found it was like
this huge staircase along the wall. It made me think
of Monty pythons for the life of Brian, that whole thing. Anyway,
(18:34):
it's older than some of the pyramids, so yeah, good job.
Kathleen Kenyon. Another woman that we have to talk about
is Hannah Marie Wormington. She was around from nineteen fourteen
to nineteen She was the first woman admitted to the
Department of Anthropology at Harvard who also graduated technically. She
was the second woman admitted overall, but she was admitted
(18:55):
to Harvard in nineteen thirty seven and received her pH
d in nineteen fifty for and according to her obituary
in the New York Times, Warmington's was an expert on
the Paleo Indian period and she was affiliated with the
Denver Museum of Natural History for nearly sixty year of
and to around out this uh this list of notable
(19:15):
female archaeologists, we have Lithuanian Maria Gim Buddhists whose focus
was on Indo European studies in the Bronze and Neolithic periods.
And she was notable because of the way that she
brought together linguistic and archaeological knowledge right and this she
took her study of basically in her in her biography
(19:39):
they talk about how it's sort of inappropriate for archaeologists
to get too deep into people's culture, maybe to assume
too much about their religion and whatnot, but she kept
finding all of those goddess figures, you know, the round
women or whatever. And she she basically developed this, this
theory of the goddess, and she saw the email form
(20:00):
rendered in thousands of images and said that it reflected
the centrality of women in religious and cultural life. Basically
said like, look, all these people were worshiping women. And
not only was her theory a big deal, and her
two books on the goddess were a big deal, but
her whole theory became such a huge deal to feminists
and women and environmentalists and nature worshipers and uh, the
(20:25):
primordial deity for a Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors in her biography,
says was female, reflecting the sovereignty of motherhood. And I
can imagine, I mean, if she's coming out with this
in the mid twentieth century, it probably was a pretty
revolutionary idea for people who probably conceptualized a lot of
times we conceptualized in the Western world, at least in
(20:46):
Judeo Christianity conceptualizes uh, you know, gods as masculine. So
that was probably pretty groundbreaking at the time. Um. And
one final name who will be much more familiar probable
way to listeners is She was not an archaeologist, but
archaeology was highly influential for her because her husband, Um,
(21:08):
was an archaeologist in the Middle East. Agatha Christie, the
famous mystery writer. She spent thirty years assisting her husband's
work in the Middle East, UM, and she would write
her books in between. And hence you have archaeology themed
Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile Goath.
So those are some names that I bet a lot
(21:30):
of listeners haven't heard from. And I really, really really
hope that we have some archaeologists out there listening. And Um,
if it's male archaeologist, you have women working with you,
women in the field, what's it like? Very curious to know,
because I feel like we, you know, we don't really
talk about archaeology all that much. I mean, we'll hear
about King tut every now and then. But this idea
(21:54):
of you know, figuring out how the discipline even came
to be and women's role in it is a pretty
interesting stuff. Yeah, exactly. So I'm glad that you wanted
to be one as a child so that I could
learn more. And I just wanted one final thing about
my freshman year experience. So I so badly wanted to
do this. I thought it was going to be so cool,
and I remember telling my my slightly stuck up roommate
(22:17):
about it, and she was like, I mean, what is
possibly left to find? I I just want everyone to
let that soak in. She actually said what is left
to find? And so every time I see something on
the news about something being discovered somewhere, I think of her.
You know what you should have said, there's space, space archaeology, excavation,
(22:42):
moon castles. So now that you're thinking about moon castles,
send us your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com
is where you can send your letters. You can also
head over to Facebook or tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast.
And in the meantime, got a couple of letters here
for you. We've got one from Zoe and this is
(23:03):
in response to our episode on prom. Zoe writes, I'm
still in high school and have not yet experienced the prom,
although in my school it's just called grad. I live
in a very rural community in Canada, and most of
the people at school are redneck farm kids. From what
I gather, our graduation banquet is going to be a
campfire barbecue in the woods somewhere, and the dance will
(23:25):
probably end up at the rodeo grounds. One of my
friends was actually looking up camouflage print dresses. Another great
plan that I've heard from the two boys in my
classes that they're going to wear car heart farm clothes
and show up in a grain struck or a tractor,
which I think is way cooler than a stretch hummer.
Limo and Zoe, I do agree with that. I find
it really annoying how prov is marketed to teams through movies,
(23:47):
TV and team romance novels, where it's blasphemy to make
light of the prom. You can easily tell that it
is really affected team culture. By the way the majority
of the girls in my class object to these ideas,
they obviously spect prom to be the super romantic, extravagant
event that they have seen and read about. I personally
think that I'm going to side with the boys, don't
(24:08):
take it so seriously, and just to have some fun
while it lasts. And this is from Don about our
episode on having the Talk with your kids. She said
that she listened intently to that episode because I have
a nine year old son who will soon be ready
to know the truth about how babies are made. He
is known for a while that moms have an egg
and deaths have a seed, which come together to make
(24:29):
a baby. When he was seven, he said, yes, I
know that, but how did the transfer take place? He's
very detail oriented. We told him he'd have to wait
until he was older to find out the answer. There's
some wonderful books I'd like to recommend to listeners, which
I learned about in library school. Robbie Harris has several
books that explain things to kids in a clear way,
with lots of great illustrations and humorous discussion between a
(24:50):
bird and a bee that lighten things up. It's not
the stork is for younger kids. It's so amazing is
for kids in the upper elementary grades, and it's perfect
normal is for middle school age kids. I have them
in my closet, ready to go when the time comes,
and good to hear that she is prepped, prepped for
the talk, and good luck with that talk with the
(25:11):
time comes again. Our email addresses mom Stuff at discovery
dot com. If you'd like to send us a letter.
You can also find us on Facebook just search stuff
Mom Never Told You, or follow us on Twitter. At
mom Stuff Podcast, and if you'd like to read what
we're doing during the week, you can head over to
our website, it's how stuff works dot com for more
(25:33):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
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