Engaging the Public Through Women's Emergence in Archaeology

Summary

As we live in a world in which the social sciences continually undergo negative publicity in the public sphere, spreading our knowledge is more important than ever. Since archaeology depends on the support of non-academic communities, we must combat negative portrayals of social science through outreach events and public portrayals of our work. We explore the impact of doing archaeology through women’s life experiences. Through this lens, we discuss the passive and active manners in which archaeologists and our audiences comprehend public archaeology, archaeological scholarship, heritage, occupations, and contemporary issues. Three cases are discussed: 1. Graduate students creating a community outreach event, which demonstrates how we can cultivate young girls’ interest in archaeology, 2. How women in field supervisor positions can create different dialogues and alter group dynamics amongst field crews, and 3. The emerging cultural heritage in southern Mexico, developing from the shared identity between an ancient priest woman and contemporaneous indigenous women. Through these three examples, we investigate different manners in which we can captivate wider audiences and the meaning this may have for public archaeology and the current position of women in academia and the public sphere.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Public Perceptions of Archaeology

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