Gender Bias in Archaeology

Abstract

Archaeologists are often accused of the uncritical projection of their own norms and values on to the past. In their splendid article ‘Archaeology and the Study of Gender’, Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector show that such presentist back-projection includes the unquestioning application of our own gender ideology. They make the point that much archaeological research is therefore biased with respect to gender.²

Earlier versions of this paper were given from 1986 to 1988, in various places. I would like to thank the members of these audiences, and the editors of this book for their comments, which have helped to improve the essay; I am, of course, responsible for the faults that remain. I am also grateful to the staffs of the Ashmolean Library, Oxford, and the Ward Chipman Library, University of New Brunswick at Saint John for their help. My husband Simon Price and our daughter Elizabeth Nixon provided much-needed support during the writing of this chapter.