Girl Archaeologist

Girl Archaeologist illuminates the life and trailblazing career of Alice Kehoe, a woman with a family who was always, also, an archaeologist.

2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Girl Archaeologist recounts Alice Kehoe's life, begun in an era very different from the twenty-first century in which she retired as an honored elder archaeologist. She persisted against entrenched patriarchy in her childhood, at Harvard University, and as she did fieldwork with her husband in the northern plains. A senior male professor attempted to quash Kehoe's career by raping her. Her Harvard professors refused to allow her to write a dissertation in archaeology. Universities paid her less than her male counterparts. Her husband refused to participate in housework or childcare. Working in archaeology and in the histories of American First Nations, Kehoe published a series of groundbreaking books and articles. Although she was denied a conventional career, through her unconventional breadth of research and her empathy with First Nations people she gained a wide circle of collaborators and colleagues. Throughout her career Kehoe found and fostered a sisterhood of feminists--strong, bright women archaeologists, anthropologists, and ethnohistorians who have been essential to the field. Girl Archaeologist is the story of how one woman pursued a professional career in a male-dominated field during a time of great change in American middle-class expectations for women.

How do we learn more about the people of the past? Through archaeology! Archaeologists are great detectives. They look for clues from the past, called artifacts, that have been buried for hundreds, even thousands of years. They investigate sites at the bottom of the sea, on land, and on mountain peaks. Archaeologists look closely at objects and where they were found on a site to discover who, what, when, where, why, and how people lived, from thousands of years ago to the recent past. In Archaeology: Cool Women Who Dig, children ages 9 through 12 learn about this amazing field and meet three dynamic women who are working in archaeology around the world. Chelsea Rose is a historical archaeologist with Southern Oregon University, Alexandra Jones runs Archaeology in the Community in Washington, DC, and Justine Benanty is a maritime archaeologist from New York City. Children will also be introduced to several pioneering female archaeologists, including Jane Dieulafoy, Gertrude Bell, and Harriet Boyd Hawes. These are people who strived to be successful in a field that wasn’t always welcoming to women. Nomad Press books in the Girls in Science series supply a bridge between girls’ interests and their potential futures by investigating science careers and introducing women who have succeeded in science. Compelling stories of real-life archaeologists provide readers with role models that they can look toward as examples of success. Archaeology: Cool Women Who Dig uses engaging content, links to primary sources, and essential questions to whet kids’ appetites for further exploration and study of archaeology. This book explores the history of archaeology, the women who helped pioneer field research, and the multitude of varied careers in this exciting and important field. Both boys and girls are encouraged to find their passion in the gritty field of archaeology.

This new edition provides a summary of these new archival discoveries and assesses their impact on our understanding of the decisions Ellingson and Robinson made.

The first women archaeologists were Victorian era adventurers who felt most at home when farthest from it. Canvas tents were their domains, hot Middle Eastern deserts their gardens of inquiry and labor. Thanks to them, prevailing ideas about feminine nature — soft, nurturing, submissive — were upended. Ladies of the Field tells the story of seven remarkable women, each a pioneering archaeologist, each headstrong, smart, and courageous, who burst into what was then a very young science. Amanda Adams takes us with them as they hack away at underbrush under a blazing sun, battle swarms of biting bugs, travel on camelback for weeks on end, and feel the excitement of unearthing history at an archaeological site. Adams also reveals the dreams of these extraordinary women, their love of the field, their passion for holding the past in their hands, their fascination with human origins, and their utter disregard for convention.

Women of Science is a collection of essays dealing with contributions women have made to various scientific disciplines, written by women scientists in those disciplines. The areas covered are: astronomy, archaeology, biology, chemistry, crystallography, engineering, geology, mathematics, medicine, and physics. The women who have written these essays are, for the most part, not professional historians, but rather scientific professionals who felt the necessity of researching the contributions women have made to the devlopment of their fields. The essays are unique, not only because they recover lost women who made significant contributions to their disciplines, but also because they are written with a depth of understanding that only a scientist working in a specific area can have. The essays will be of interest not only to students (especially women students) of science who may be unaware of the many contributions women have made, but also to readers of the history of science whoses texts more often than not fail to include the work of most women scientists.