ABSTRACT
Archaeology, the study of the material remains of human life, is a subfield of anthropology, the study of human existence as a whole. Archaeologists learn aspects of how people lived in the past and what they did by carefully excavating the objects left behind as a result of human activity. For example, by looking at bones and seeds thrown away we learn what people ate, and by looking at the layout of building foundations and walls, we learn how people built their houses and allocated space within them. Although the methods by which we recover data from the ground are well established, how those data are interpreted changes rapidly. One of the newest interpretation methods is called engendered archaeology (Conkey and Gero, 1991) or feminist archaeology (Gilchrist, 1991). This chapter provides an overview of ideas generated and problems encountered by feminist archaeology, as well as the future of feminist archaeology. As a subset of anthropology, archaeology uses the word “culture” in a fairly specialized manner. Culture is often described as a shared web of beliefs, values, and actions. To be a part of a given society, one must know and practice these beliefs, values, etc. One part of culture is a society’s ideas about gender, and every culture in the world develops its own ideas.
