Reflections

Women in the history of archaeology media portrayals   Women have held a role in archaeology since it first began to emerge as a discipline. In some case undertaking ground-breaking activity in research, excavations, and in some cases developing the forbearers of modern-day fieldwork techniques. But how have these actions been conveyed to the wider public? There are many established female scholars in both the history of academic archaeology, and currently researching today. While in developer-led archaeology the ground team is still chiefly comprised of women (Everill,2012), alongside post-excavation teams and project management. But how are these roles communicated to the public through various media? Archaeology is often touched upon in fiction, novels, films, and video games, but also documentaries. I should preface this chapter by recognising that of course standard fieldwork and research methodology does not create a fictional medium that can spellbind an unspecialized au...

    The conclusion of Everill’s study in 2012 shed some light upon the gender makeup of commercial archaeology and highlighted how the male gender remains promoted to the public as the image of an archaeologist. “The average British commercial archaeologist in 2012 is a white male. He is 38.38 years old – interestingly six years older than the result of the 2005 survey, further supporting the view of an ageing profession, with little intake of recent graduates. He has a degree, 10.74 years of field experience, and earns £20,000.” (Everill, 2012) Everill’s survey was completed by those working in or having recently worked in developer-led archaeology. While this has led to some more candid responses than those formally provided by organisations, as the Profiling the Profession surveys traditionally were, it does also result in a far smaller data set. But the trends seem similar. Both of which show there is a far closer balance between the genders than previously over the pa...

    An earlier chapter mentioned Dame Rosemary Cramp, I included Cramp as she was the first female Professor at Durham and wanted to see if the gender split had improved in the years since. Particularly as the presence of a female lecturer can be a positive indicator to female students that they can continue onto a career in their chosen field of study. As this paper is being written, the latest Profiling the Profession survey by Landward Research Ltd. has just concluded. Sadly, compilation of data takes time, and the full dataset is not yet available. However, some statistics have started to be released. According to the latest survey 7000 people currently work in archaeology in the UK, 850 of these are in the academic sector. (Landward Research, 2021) I was therefore hoping to get the latest gender splits for academia in archaeology, but these are sadly not yet available, also it is to be noted that Landward have changed their methodology for this survey. Previously th...

   Women pioneers in archaeology.     Some of the women who have created or contributed to archaeology, how have their efforts been recognised and communicated to academia, students, and the public? Word count restraints mean I have had to severely limit the women discussed here and how much detail I can go into. However, I have attempted to select a few of the women who I believe have made pioneering changes to archaeology as it is conducted today, at least in my own personal field of experience, that being as someone who works in developer-led archaeology, with an interest in outreach, community archaeology, and its data dispersal to the wider public.   Dame Maud Cunnington was born in 1869, and by 1897 was engaging in ‘rescue archaeology’ in her local area of Wiltshire, where she had settled after marrying her husband, the then honorary curator of Devises Museum. She wrote up these excavations and her subsequent post excavation analysis, including ceram...