Making the Data Count: Analyzing Inequities and Challenging Epistemic Injustice in Archaeological Discourse

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Documenting Demographics in Archaeological Publications and Grants" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The recent resurgence of interest in diversity and equity issues in archaeological practice highlights persistent disparities in the demographic composition of practitioners in various aspects of the discipline. Drawing from a database that we generated on the gender and occupational affiliation of 5,010 authors of 2,445 articles in six regional and national publication venues, we demonstrate that men and individuals in academic settings continue to dominate discourses in North American archaeology, particularly in the more prestigious publication venues. We further document considerably higher representations of women and compliance archaeologists in non-peer-reviewed publishing forums. We frame our results within the context of the “leaky pipeline” effect for women, and the cost-benefit realities of publishing for people who occupy different professional sectors of archaeology. Insights into the methodological difficulties of analyzing equity and diversity in the sciences, as well as problems with conventional measurements of “success” in the modern professional era of North American archaeology, are provided. We conclude by offering realistic and nontraditional strategies for reducing epistemic injustice in the contemporary landscape of knowledge dissemination.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Documenting Demographics in Archaeological Publications and Grants

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32303