Females and Ancestors: Creating an ethical foundation to recover and analyze pre-Columbian osteological remains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Behind the Scenes and on the Stage: The Women Who Shaped Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The visibility of female’s efforts to the development of Ecuadorian archaeology is still in progress. Therefore, we begin our conversation with an evaluation of the contributions of female archaeologists working within the domain of bio-archaeology, an arena practiced by mostly women. However, their voices are still not heard by the male Ecuadorian archaeologists. In the first part of the essay, we introduce the work of few females, with diverse backgrounds, and their accomplishments in the realms of excavation, interpretation, conservation, storing, etc. of human remains. Emphasis is given to the difficulties women encountered and continue to encounter while navigating the gendered "ecosystem" of bio-archaeology research in Ecuador. Despite of this, female archaeologists have been at the vanguard of the bioethics debate addressing issues of local community inclusion in the research process, and repatriation of osteological materials. In this regard, we present our findings from the first multivocal bioethics workshop conducted in coastal Ecuador with the participation of scientists, governmental agencies, and the descendent community.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Behind the Scenes and on the Stage: The Women Who Shaped Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53115