Gender in Archaeology, Analyzing Power and Prestige, Second Edition (Gender and Archaeology)

This book does a fantastic job of highlighting many instances where gender discrimination in the archaeology field has been a detriment to the science and illustrates the fact that only by focusing on the contributions of all genders can we come to a more accurate understanding of our human past.

Published in 2004, I am reading it in 2014 and here writing the first review on Amazon. It may be that people think this is a specialist volume which has its dialog in specialist journals or privately in correspondence. Certainly the book is addressed to the field of archaeology more than to the general public. But as a general reader, one who has read a few other archaeological books and thinks that archaeology matters, I find this volume very worthwhile and informative. First and foremost, it is remarkable to think that the notion of gender has not played much of a role in archaeology up to now. And that Nelson's main point is to suggest how engendering should take place in the myriad of sub-fields that make up the discipline. I might have been looking for a definitive statement about gender in archaeology when I started reading this. But I realized quickly that I would not find it. Instead I found a story of the exclusion of women and the mindless backlash against including them in the field. Archaeology should be ashamed of itself. And I know that Nelson is right because in all the reading I have done in this field, I have been looking for this elephant in the room and not finding it. When I finally came upon Marija Gimbutas, I found an author who made a serious effort to engender her archaeology. And then I found no one paid her much attention. Nelson mentions her but seems to defer to the hair splitting attacks that have unfairly isolated her writings. Whatever the ultimate conclusions about gender in archaeology, if there ever are any, this book helped me understand the real state of thinking in the field of archaeology regarding gender. I just wish someone in the field would write for the general public and explain what adding gender to our prehistory might mean and how it would look. You don't need scientific proof to start us thinking along some different lines than patriarchy which as gotten us into our current dead end civilization.