LADIES of the FIELD
AMANDA ADAMS
LADIES of the FIELD
· · · · · · EARLY · · · · · ·
WOMEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS
AND THEIR SEARCH FOR ADVENTURE
Copyright © 2010 by Amanda Adams
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Greystone Books
An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7
Cataloguing in Publication data available from Library and Archives Canada ISBN: 978-1-55365-433- 9 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-55365- 641-8 (ebook)
Editing by Nancy Flight
Copyediting by Lara Kordic
Cover and text design by Heather Pringle
Front cover photographs:
(top left) © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS ;
(top right) © Smith College Archives, Smith College;
(bottom right) © Harry Todd/Getty Images
Front cover background image:
The Map House of London/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer paper
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
For the two great women in my life:
My mother, Kathy
And in memory of my grandmother Lorraine Shea
CONTENTS
THE NILE’S GRAND DAME Amelia Edwards 1831–1892
ALL DRESSED UP IN A MAN’S SUIT Jane Dieulafoy 1851–1916
MEXICO’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL QUEEN Zelia Nuttall 1857–1933
O, DESERT TIGER ! Gertrude Bell 1868–1926
JUST LIKE A VOLCANO Harriet Boyd Hawes 1871–1945
ARCHAEOLOGY’S BIG DETECTIVE Agatha Christie 1890–1976
LIKE A GLASS OF STONY WHITE WINE Dorothy Garrod 1892–1968
EPILOGUE Excavations
GLOSSARY
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
RECOMMENDED READING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
PHOTO CREDITS
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, conventional ideas about feminine nature—soft, nurturing, submissive—were up-ended. The excavation shovel churned things up, flipped things over, and loosened the stays of gender a little. Ladies of the Field tells the stories of seven remarkable women, each a pioneering archaeologist, each a force of nature who possessed intellect and guts. All were convention-breaking and courageous women who burst into the halls of what was then a very young science.
For centuries, archaeology had been little more than a game of treasure hunting, a kind of cowboy science in which men traveled far and wide in search of gold and other trophies to bring home. Early archaeological exploration wasn’t much different from looting; it was the khaki-clad branch of art history that emphasized digging and acquiring (nay, stealing) the art. Yet by the mid-nineteenth century, archaeology was shaking off its antiquarian robes. Women were beginning to enter the field, sending a bright signal not just that times had begun to change but that archaeology would too. The nineteenth century was a time when more and more women began rejecting common submission to the patriarchy. It was a time of increasing social turmoil: John Stuart Mill’s book The Subjection of Women (1869) was causing a stir in its demand for equality between the sexes. Working-class girls were receiving more education than ever before, and even inventions like the typewriter and the telephone eventually helped to bring women out of the house and into the workforce, where their talents could be at least moderately appreciated. Some women were becoming more vocal about their rights and their wants. For most this meant pursuing the right to vote in their home country or the opportunity to simply further their education. For others, it meant climbing mountains, becoming doctors or architects, and fighting for entry into scientific fields. For early women archaeologists, it was by their work—some of it sensuous travelogue, more of it formidable scholarship—that they helped to reshape how we study the past.
The belief persists that women are not mentioned in the early annals of archaeology’s history because they weren’t there. Not true. Women were present in the archaeological field by the mid- to late 1800s, but they were very few and were often given diminished scholarly treatment by male colleagues. As one scholar explains, “Over the course of the last 150 years, a rigid power structure has been established in archeology. Although men have controlled this power structure throughout the history of the discipline, women have always made significant, if devalued, contributions to archeology.”1 Those neglected contributions are emerging from the shadows today.
Before the 1920s and 30s, when archaeology became more firmly established and its doors were opened to women much more so than ever before, a handful of intrepid ladies chased their love of hidden history. Some worked part-time in museums; others had the financial means to contribute to digs and explorations. But an extraordinary few packed their bags, left the floral sitting rooms and pretty petticoats behind, and embarked on rigorous journeys that took them around the world in pursuit of archaeological wonders. This book is about them.
The pioneering female archaeologists were a diverse group: reckless