Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recognition of the 101st anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, we celebrate other female firsts, specifically those of pioneering women in American archaeology and beyond. Although they gained the right to vote in 1920, women were not yet regularly allowed to participate on their own merit in American archaeology, with few exceptions. It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that women were able to train beside men in graduate schools or field schools. During the 1930s the numbers of women doing fieldwork and completing MAs greatly increased, and during the 1940s and 1950s women had more access to earning PhDs. Despite these gains across the decades, women continued to experience lower pay grades, limitations on degrees obtained, and relegation to specific research niches. We focus on our predecessors who broke such barriers. These women, whether they were the first female PhDs in anthropology programs or female archaeologists of color, forged a path for others while also creating waves. Importantly, breaking barriers is not an artifact of the past; female archaeologists today, and certainly female archaeologists of color, continue to make strides in the field and achieve their own female firsts in the discipline.

Other Keywords
History Of Archaeology • Historic • Ethnohistory/History • Cahokia • Cultural Resource Management • Colonialism • Ceramic Analysis • Archaic • Woodland • Ancestral Pueblo

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • USA (Country) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • Kansas (State / Territory) • North America • Arizona (State / Territory) • United Mexican States (Country) • Delaware (State / Territory) • Georgia (State / Territory)

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  • Documents (13)
Documents
  • Celebrating the Design Work of Bettye J. Broyles (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Smith.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many archaeologists, the late Bettye J. Broyles discovered what she wanted to do in her twenties while enrolled in college. It was there where Broyles’s archaeological career began to take shape, and by summer of 1954 she had embarked on her first field school. Broyles went on...

  • Changing Tides and Terrain: Dr. Mary Butler's Hudson Valley Archaeological Survey (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Michael Garbellano.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Consistent demonstration of patience and fortitude are characteristics of the most revered pioneers in human history. These qualities were seen in many individuals blazing new paths for others to follow. Directly or indirectly, those who created these paths helped improve the...

  • Crystal Bennett and the 1965 American Embassy Medain Saleh Expedition in Saudi Arabia (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Scott.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. British archaeologist Crystal Bennett (1918–1987) is considered one of the formidable British female archaeologists of the Middle East, conducting investigations across Jordan and beyond from 1957 to 1983. As Dame Kathleen Kenyon’s student at the University of London in the early...

  • Dena Dincauze: The Matriarch of New England Archaeology (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Kirakosian.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dena Dincauze (1934–2016) made a great impact throughout her archaeological career, not only in New England, but also throughout North America more broadly. As one of the first women to receive her PhD from Harvard University, Dena was also one of the first tenured female...

  • Dr. Lynn Fredlund, Archaeologist of the Northwestern Plains (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mavis Greer. John W. Greer. Gene Munson.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lynn Fredlund was a product of the 1960s, the decade before women exploded onto the archaeological scene on the Northern Plains. She was one of the earliest archaeologists to earn her living as a contract archaeologist and one of the first in the region to earn a PhD while actively...

  • Elizabeth Ann Morris: Dishwasher, Digger, Instructor, Professor (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Pool.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Liz Morris (1932–2012) grew up surrounded by artifacts and archaeologists as the daughter of Earl and Ann Axtell Morris, renowned Southwestern and Mesoamerican archaeologists. She launched her own archaeological career in 1951 when she attended field camp at Pine Lawn, NM, where...

  • Female Firsts: Hidden Figures: The Women of Irish Archaeology (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebekah Mills. Lauren Brooks. Rachel Brody. Valerie Watson. Zoe Merod.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2018, among the top five hashtags in Ireland was #repealthe8th. On May 25, 2018, the amendment that largely banned all abortions was repealed. With this vote, many Irish women felt their voices were finally heard. With women's rights and activism at the forefront in Irish...

  • Florence Hawley’s Enduring Legacy in Southeastern Archaeology and Beyond (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michaelyn Harle. Laura Smith. Suzanne Fisher. Heather Heart.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the pioneers of dendrochronology, Florence Hawley was employed by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the 1930s during the archaeological excavations that were conducted prior to impoundment of Norris Reservoir. Hawley’s work was one of the earliest attempts at establishing a...

  • Harriet Smith, Educator and Archaeologist (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynne Goldstein. John Kelly.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Harriet Smith worked at the Field Museum in Chicago for much of her long career. She was in the Education Department and focused primarily on teaching high school students about archaeology and other disciplines. However, this simple statement does not do justice to Harriet’s...

  • Janet D. Spector (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Hoffman.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Janet D. Spector is best known for her groundbreaking work in Feminist Archaeology and collaborative research but she also made significant contributions beyond archaeology. Spector helped form the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Minnesota in 1973, the first in the...

  • “They left about the time I could begin to depend upon them”: Helen Sloan Daniels and the National Youth Administration Durango Public Library Museum Project (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernard Means.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the lesser known programs that funded archaeological excavations during the Great Depression was the National Youth Administration (NYA). NYA archaeology has been overshadowed by projects funded by its more prominent “cousin,” the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and its...

  • Two Pioneering California Women Archaeologists, 1940s–1960s: Agnes Bierman Babcock and Freddie Curtis (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven James.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although this may seem surprising, there were very few women California archaeologists prior to the 1940s. This presentation discusses the lives of two pioneering women archaeologists who worked primarily in Southern California from the late 1940s to the 1960s, that of Agnes Bierman...

  • Zelia Nuttall and Drake's Dream (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Darby.

    This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1886 Zelia Nuttall began work at the Peabody Museum for Ethnology and Archaeology under the tutelage of Frederic Putnam. Nuttall became a specialist in precolumbian Mesoamerican cultures and conducted archaeological fieldwork in Mexico for the Peabody, where she was “Honorary...