Betwixt and Between: Ethnoarchaeology, Women, Susan Kent
The gilded Marshalltown traditionally went to the guy dressed in faded khakis, eyes squinting in a weather-beaten face, pipe in hand, trowel in the belt (Flannery 1982:267). He dug square holes to get data. Frequently, there were a few young women in his crew, women who mostly worked steadily, eyes lowered as the guy in charge ogled down their halter-tops. Summer over, some of these women worked in the lab. Photographs of field crews named young men, but less often, women (e.g., Jennings 1994:145). Linguists distinguish between unmarked, or basic, categories and marked words, with qualifiers affixed to the basic morpheme. For example, ‘man’ is the unmarked, and ‘woman’ (derived from ‘wif-man,’ that is, wife-man) is the marked word. Similarly, ‘archaeology’ functions as the basic term and ‘ethnoarchaeology’ is the marked category. It follows that a woman doing ethnoarchaeology is special, outside the basic cognitive frame ‘archaeology.’ No woman pursuing ethnoarchaeology has been recognized in standard histories of the profession. This essay will center on Susan Kent, a person who was an indefatigable fieldworker, had an enviable list of significant articles and edited volumes at her early death at 50, served the profession in national organization offices, sparked many discussions with her cogent analyses and stimulating observations, and nurtured a number of younger scholars. Her operational method of doing ethnoarchaeology focused the subfield (David and Kramer 2001:11). To no avail when it came to appointment to larger research-supporting anthropology programs to which she applied, her accomplishments seemingly could not balance what hiring committees saw as a short, plump woman whose lectures at interviews failed to dispel the negative impression. Kent’s career illuminates how fundamental to Western societies is the unmarked ‘man’ standing for ‘human being.’ Our professional community had difficulty fitting the anomalous ‘woman’ ‘ethnoarchaeologist’ into its model of the discipline, exhibiting the androcentrism that can obfuscate substantial, illuminating contributions. The hallmark of Kent’s archaeological practice was her deep, empathetic engagement with non-Western communities. Her model of ethnoarchaeology contrasts with that of the New Archaeology ‘processual’ archaeologists avowedly pursuing ‘lawlike’ generalizations (O’Brien et al. 2005:101–103). Empathy with the people with whom she sat as a participant observer drove her to active concern with her communities’ complicated political issues, particularly about health. ethnoarchaeology, Vol. 5 No. 2, October, 2013, 112–118
Archaeological Ethnography in Western Iran, 1959-1960
The “Classics Review” is a new series that our journal is launching in this volume. The purpose of this section is to highlight ground-breaking scholars in ethnoarchaeology and experimental studies — those individuals and their research that have and continue to shape our discipline. Each volume will focus on one or two works. For instance, in this inaugural volume we present reviews on the important and early works of Patty Jo Watson and Carol Kramer. To make this interesting, we invited our noted scholars to provide perspective on their research as well as the opportunity to evaluate their work and the discipline in general. In addition, we have invited scholars to review the meaning and impact of these publications on their own research and broadly in the field.
Negotiating the cultural and economic outcomes of sport heritage attractions: the case of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
ABSTRACT Contemporary museums must balance their roles as commercial entities and repositories of various, and often dissonant, heritages and histories. Sports museums in particular often have clear commercial and nostalgic aims, particularly through tourist visitation, though the extent to which they represent more challenging narratives remains unclear. This paper examines how one of the most famous sports museums in the world, the National Baseball Hall of Fame (NBHF) in Cooperstown, New York, balances its dual role as tourist attraction and repository of baseball's sometimes checkered past. It was found that different sections of the museum provide greater or lesser degrees of engagement with more controversial issues, although the commercial outputs and appeal of the museum remains clear throughout. Utlimately, the NBHF demonstrates that balancing veneration and critique in collections can be commercially prosperous, and can provide a template for other sport and popular culture museums who may be wary of incorporating more challenging narratives in their exhibits. Furthermore, the symbiotic relationship between the Hall of Fame and the village of Cooperstown, particularly in creating and maintaining cultural and economic outputs, requires further exploration.