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Feminist Archaeology
Feminist Archaeology
Feminist archaeology
Feminist archaeology employs a feminist perspective in interpreting past societies. It often focuses on gender, but also considers gender in tandem with other factors, such as sexuality, race, or class. Feminist archaeology has critiqued the uncritical application of modern, Western norms and values to past societies. It is additionally concerned with the androcentric biases structuring disciplinary norms of archaeology itself, and gender equality within the profession.
Feminist archaeology
Feminist archaeology Additionally, feminist archaeologists have engaged in the use of fiction to help access the past. This has taken the form of plays, as seen in Red-Light Voices,[20] based on letters and diaries by early 20th-century prostitutes to explore prostitution. Another example is seen in Laurie Wilkies fictional worker involved in the Federal Writers' Project, interjected in her archaeological study of an African-American midwife in the post-emancipation South.[21] Janet Spector interpreted the meaning behind a single artifact through a fictional narrative in What This Awl Means.[22] Narrative has been argued as an effective means by which archaeologists can create multivocal and more broadly accessible interpretations and presentations.[23] The use of storytelling demonstrate[s] how narrative is a powerful tool for bringing texture, nuance, and humanity to womens experiences as evidenced through archaeology[24]).
Intersectional analysis
A common analytical technique employed by feminist (and some non-feminist) archaeologists is intersectional analysis, which, following the assertions of black feminists leading third-wave feminism in the U.S., maintains that gender cannot be accessed by itself but must be studied in conjunction with other forms of identity.[25] In historical archaeology the linkage between gender, race, and class has been increasingly explored, but other aspects of identity, notably sexuality, have been examined as well in relation to gender.[26] Intersectional analysis has not been limited to feminist archaeology, as illustrated by the prevalent use of gender-race-class as a means of exploring identity by historical archaeologists. Although many such studies have focused on white, middle-class women of the recent Anglo-American past,[27] the articulation of gender with other aspects of identity is starting to be applied to Native American women[28] and African Americans.[29] The work of Kathleen Deagan[30] on Spanish colonial sites in the US and Caribbean has pioneered a movement of study of gender in the Spanish colonies.[31] The use of black feminist work, which calls to attention the inherent connectivity between gender and class in the U.S. has been an important step in advancing the use of intersectional analysis in archaeology.[32]
Household Studies
Archaeological studies of domestic sites have been particularly affected by ongoing feminist work. The long-standing trend in archaeology to associate women with domestic spaces, placed in opposition to the association with men and public spaces, has been a continuous locus of feminist research. Since the advent of the new millennium, there has been a shift away from such dichotomized spatial separation of gender. In historical archaeology, feminist archaeologists have been crucial to widening the definition of what constitutes a household from a familial model based on Western norms, such as household archaeology projects studying brothels[33] and fraternities.[34] By engaging with broader household literature, archaeologists have begun to re-conceive household, long considered autonomous analytical units, as political spaces, occupied by social actors occupying different social positions shaped by gender, race, age, occupation, socioeconomic status, and so on.[35]
Feminist archaeology
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Hays-Gilpin, 2000:92. Feminist Scholarship in Archaeology. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 571:89-106. Gero, 1985:342. Sociopolitics and the Woman-at-Home Ideology. American Antiquity 50:342-50 (1991, ed. Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey) (1991 Vol. 25 No. 4) 1983. Woman the Gatherer ed. Frances Dahlberg 1991. Genderlithics: Women's Roles in Stone Tool Production. In Engendered Archaeology: Women in Prehistory, ed. Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey, 163-193 [7] Wylie 2007 [8] Caesalla 2000. Bulldaggers and Gentle Ladies: Archaeological Approaches to Female Homosexuality in Convict-Era Australia. Archaeologies of Sexuality ed. Robert Schmidt and Barbara Voss 160-178; Voss 2000. Colonial Sex: Archaeology, Structured Space, and Sexuality in Alta California's Spanish-Colonial Missions. See Schmidt and Voss volume 35-61 [9] DeCunzo 1995. Reform, respite, ritual: An archaeology of institutions; The Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800-1850. In Historical Archaeology Vol. 9 No. 23; Wilkie 2000. Magical passions: Sexuality and African-American archaeology. See Schmidt and Voss volume 129-142 [10] Meskell and Joyce 2003. Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience [11] Conkey 2003. Has Feminism Changed Archaeology? In Signs Vol. 28 No. 3 [12] Geller 2009. Identity and Difference: Complicating Gender in Archaeology. In Annual Review of Archaeology Vol. 38 [13] Sorenson 2000. Gender Archaeology [14] Little 1994:10. People with history: An update on historical archaeology in the United States. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Vol. 1 No. 1 [15] 2007. Doing Archaeology as a Feminist. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Vol. 14 [16] Geller 2009. Identity and Difference: Complicating Gender in Archaeology. In Annual Review of Archaeology Vol. 38 [17] Franklin 2001. A Black feminist-inspired archaeology? Journal of Social Archaeology Vol. 1 No. 1; Wilkie 2005. Inessential archaeologies: problems of exclusion in Americanist archaeological thought. World Archaeology Vol. 37 No. 3; Conkey 2005. Dwelling at the margins, action at the intersection? Feminist and indigenous archaeologies. Archaeologies Vol. 1 No. 1; Voss 2008. The archaeology of ethnogenesis: race and sexuality in colonial San Francisco [18] Moser 2007. On Disciplinary Culture: Archaeology as Fieldwork and Its Gendered Associations. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Vol. 14 No. 3 [19] Conkey 2005 [20] Costello, 2000 [21] 2003 The archaeology of mothering: an African-American midwife's tale [22] Spector 1993 [23] Joyce 2002. The Languages of Archaeology [24] Wilkie and Howlett Hayes 2006:252. Engendered and Feminist Archaeologies of the Recent and Documented Pasts. Journal of Archaeological Research Vol. 14 [25] Geller 2009. Identity and Difference: Complicating Gender in Archaeology. In Annual Review of Archaeology Vol. 38 [26] see Schmidt and Voss volume 2008 [27] Wilkie and Hayes 2006 [28] Lightfoot 2005. Indians, missionaries, and merchants: the legacy of colonial encounters on the Californian Frontiers; Howlett 2004. Gendered Practices: Ethnohistoric and Archaeological Evidence of Native American Social Divisions of Labor. Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut No. 66 [29] Galle and Young 2004. Engendering African American archaeology: a southern perspective [30] 1985. The archaeology of the Spanish contact period in the Caribbean. Journal of World Prehistory Vol. 2 No. 2; 1996. Colonial Transformation: Euro-American Cultural Genesis in the Early Spanish-American Colonies. Journal of Anthropological Research Vol. 52 No. 2 [31] Jamieson 2000. Domestic architecture and power: the historical archaeology of colonial Ecuador; Rothschild 2003. Colonial encounters in a Native American landscape: the Spanish and Dutch in North America; see Voss 2008 [32] see Franklin 2001 [33] e.g., Seifert et al 2000. Mary Ann Hall's First-Class House: the Archaeology of a Capital Brothel. See Schmidt and Voss volume
Feminist archaeology
[34] Wilkie 2010. The lost boys of Zeta Psi: a historical archaeology of masculinity in a university fraternity [35] Hendon 2006. Living and Working at Home:The Social Archaeology of Household Production and Social Relations. A Companion to Social Archaeology ed. by Lynn Meskell and Robert W. Preucel 255-271 [36] see Wilkie 2010 [37] Joyce 2000. Girling the girl and boying the boy: the production of adulthood in ancient Mesoamerica. World Archaeology Vol. 31 No. 3
External links
Feminist archaeology (http://archaeology.about.com/od/fterms/g/feminist.htm) FemArc Women's network in archaeology (http://www.femarc.de/Netzwerk/text/naafweb1.html)
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