In 1998 this journal (Archaeological dialogues 5(2)) published an editorial titled ‘What is wrong with gender archaeology?’. Responding to this rhetorical question, the editor affirmed that indeed nothing was wrong with it; to the contrary, gender archaeology was as healthy as could be, ‘one of the most thriving fields within the discipline’ (Archaeological dialogues 1998, 88). Nonetheless, the writer then proceeded to describe a pervasive, ongoing issue with the article review process. Any submission that addressed gender would elicit warm praise from a reviewer chosen for familiarity with or expertise in gender studies. At the same time, the article would meet with harsh criticism from a second reviewer, selected for area, time period or topical specialization. The result was a continuing dilemma of how best to choose a third reviewer (a dilemma likely familiar to anyone who has submitted an article on any less-conventional topic to many disciplinary journals, not only in archaeology). This polarized reception of gender archaeology, and an unwillingness to engage in a dialogue around it, were persistent and deeply troubling. Comparing claims of novelty in gender archaeology with similar statements made decades earlier by New Archaeology, the editor suggested that processual archaeology gained support only after it had proven its worth in specific case studies, only ‘when substantial work demonstrated that this was indeed rather different and promising’ (Archaeological dialogues 1998, 89). Such an expectation would appear most sensible for any empirically engaged discipline. As someone who attended graduate school in the 1990s, in a programme that embraced and promoted gender archaeology with great enthusiasm (UC–Berkeley), however, I was quite surprised then to read the following sentence:

The editor then suggested that Gilchrist's Gender and archaeology. The archaeology of religious women (1994) was still the best, perhaps even the only, example of gender archaeology that not only asked questions but also ‘has gone considerable ways to answer them’ (Archaeological dialogues 1998, 89, stress in the original).

The Archaeological dialogues editorial highlights a serious dilemma for those working out both the theoretical and methodological issues raised by gender archaeology, even if in a form that did not exactly inspire a sense of support. Could an approach inspired by the political present, one that advocated fundamental reorientation toward the object of study, achieve recognition as a ‘promising’ advance for a normative scientific tradition? Which questions might appear appropriately ‘answerable’, and worthy of being asked? And to what extent might a polarized field of reception reflect something about ‘the feminized age’ as well as conflicting visions of the past and of the profession?

To fully appreciate the hostility that the topic of gender has evoked among some archaeologists, I encourage the reader to seek out this issue of the journal (Archaeological dialogues (1998) 5(2)). Along with the editorial, it contains an article by Bernard Knapp: ‘Who's come a long way, baby. Masculinist approaches to a gendered archaeology’ (1998). Knapp's piece is a thoughtful exploration of the potential application of feminist theory and masculinist scholarship to archaeological questions. The piece is part of a dialogue, with two archaeologists (Bailey and Treherne) and a cultural anthropologist (Gutmann) as respondents. Only the cultural anthropologist, however, actually engages the author. The reactions of the archaeologists are eminently worth reading as examples of ‘polarized attitudes’ and of the place of vitriol amid human as well as chemical reactions. In this context, I was then even more puzzled by the editorial tone and the suggestion that by 1998 there were no successful writings on gender archaeology, save one. This essay therefore attempts to clarify this arguably ‘inaccurate’ history, and offers an assessment of the health of ‘one of the most thriving fields within the discipline’ (Archaeological dialogues 1998, 88) a decade later.

A roadmap

Chronology seems to be every archaeologist's second skin. In order to offer even a cursory survey of the state of archaeology of gender in the 21st century, and assess its vitality and progress over the last decade, I will take a chronological approach. Change through time – the increase or decrease in a number of publications, the choice of topics and their popularity – can thus serve as one measure of progress or of a lack thereof. Thus I will first explore the foundational work for anyone interested in gender and archaeology in the 1990s, before proceeding to address more recent contributions. Yet a caveat is immediately in order. Given the slow gestation cycle of academic publication, imposing an artificial boundary such as the first year of a new millennium obviously distorts its relation to the actual activity during the previous decade. The productivity of the 1990s resulted in publication of an impressive number of edited volumes, single-author books and journal articles, including special journal issues devoted to certain aspects of gender theory and method – queer theory in World archaeology (32(2)) in 2000, and feminism in the Journal of archaeological method and theory (14(3)) in 2007. Work published since the year 2000 is thus directly linked and indeed indebted to the challenges and energy of the 1990s, including its ad nauseam discussion of conceptual issues. Thus my return to an editorial from 1998 is as much an act of chronological honesty, as a wish to illustrate a critical question and common perception of the time.

Easy reliance on chronology as an explanation also tends to mask the diversity of actual practices at any given point. Besides noting the temporal context, then, it may be illuminating to group the published work by common themes and consider which topics generate the most interest, excitement and words. Which aspects of gender appear to be most amenable to archaeological research, and which topics are tackled only by the few brave or foolish enough to stand out? In order to make these distinctions I will create a simple typology of sorts, in order to suggest the most- and the least-common topics. Besides the construction of subject categories, I will use this template to explore the question of politics and science, and their unhappy marriage in certain archaeological circles. I will note the different understanding of ‘politics’ itself in the United States, as compared to Scandinavia, Spain or Britain, as a distinguishing feature that has consequences for the topics and theoretical approaches that archaeologists choose to pursue or avoid. An overt claim to interest in women, gender or a feminist project, I will stress, also reflects a willingness to accept that archaeology itself (even in its most scientific formulation), is a political project, making a public claim on history.

The sites of plenty

Having surrounded myself with available books and various reports that address gender as a central issue, I quickly came to a startling realization. In the last 20 years archaeological gender research has multiplied exponentially and has gone global. Stacks of books dealing with every geographic region piled next to me. It would be difficult these days to start an article with the claim that gender is a neglected or an unknown topic, as was the case in the 1980s: ‘There is virtually no systematic work on the archaeological study of gender. There are no publications in the field with titles like “Methods for Examining Gender through the Archaeological Record”’ (Conkey and Spector 1984, 2). Conkey and Spector had every right to despair, as, unlike in cultural anthropology, gender was truly absent in archaeology, few places in Scandinavia excepted. The map of the world no longer has obvious blank spots where no one works on the topic, or has never tried to address it. Thus at first glance it would appear that gender archaeology is enjoying an unprecedented, worldwide popularity.

Of course, wide dispersal is only one sign of demographic success, and should not be interpreted too easily or simply. Let us, then, sift more carefully through the literature and see where the new work can be found in abundance and where it is only a thin layer, restricted to certain venues. Journal articles provide another register to track shifting trends; given their generally shorter gestation period and their bounded format they have the ability to reflect trends of innovative work, methods or a theoretical proposition. A quick survey of American antiquity and Latin American antiquity, the two main journals of the Society for American Archaeology, best known for publication of evidence-based research and not prone to promotion of postprocessual approaches, reveals a dramatic change over the last 20 years. Prior to 1990, I could find no articles, book reviews or even brief research reports that addressed gender as a central, or even a side, issue. Between 1990 and 2010, however, American antiquity published 17 articles that directly addressed gender in their title, abstract or keyword, with ten additional responses to several of these publications (some negative or critical but engaged nevertheless). In addition, during those same 20 years, the journal published 17 reviews of books that dealt with gender. While hardly a tidal wave at roughly one article and a book review per year, considering that earlier there were no publications on the topic whatsoever, a sustained shift is clear. Latin American antiquity, on the other hand, seems either more hesitant to publish research on gender, or possibly receives fewer submissions related to the topic. In those same 20 years only four articles and three book reviews dealt explicitly with gender. This scarcity should give us pause, particularly given that prominent Mesoamerican archaeologists (e.g. Ardren, Bruhns, Brumfiel, Gero, Gillespie, Hendon, Joyce, McAnany) have directly and creatively dealt with gender elsewhere in edited volumes, conference proceedings, single-author books and publications in other journals. Furthermore, the sort of archaeological materials best known from this region – pottery, figurines, iconography, household settlements, even written records – would appear ideal for addressing questions related to gender. As Rosemary Joyce notes (Reference Joyce and Nelson2006, 785), ‘The archaeology of Mesoamerica, the culture area that spans central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and includes western Honduras and El Salvador, has been a center of development for archaeologies of gender’. If that is indeed the case, it does not seem to be reaching the pages of Latin American antiquity, but remains a world apart.

A glance across the ocean provides us with an interesting point of comparison, due to the general perception of British archaeology as more amenable to theoretical discussions and postprocessual approaches. Where does gender archaeology stand in British publications? The journal Antiquity is to some degree comparable to American antiquity in its focus on research articles, reports and reviews. Over the same 20-year period (1990–2010), Antiquity actually published slightly fewer articles that addressed gender: 14, with two additional reports. This is potentially remarkable since the journal covers a wider temporal and geographical frame than its American cousin, stretching from the earliest Palaeolithic until medieval times, the world over, and devoting generous space to the history of the discipline. On the other hand, Antiquity gave far more space to book reviews (28 publications), some quite lengthy and thoroughly engaged with gender research, if at times negatively or quite critically. Thus the modest rate of one article every two years is worth pondering, whether it again might also reflect low submission rates, rejections, or a sense of not being the appropriate publication venue for those who address gender through archaeological research.

So what about journals that tout theoretical advances and a brash postprocessual attitude? Two publications known for interesting and spirited arguments and presentations are the Cambridge archaeological journal and Archaeological dialogues. The former published a bit more on the topic, with 18 articles and five book reviews, while the database indicates 10 articles on gender in the latter. Though these journals appear less frequently than the three Antiquities, and the format of an in-depth dialogue makes classification of the topic of some of the responses harder to categorize, gender-related work clearly remains a minority voice even in more theoretically oriented venues. All told, these numbers do suggest an enduring legacy – gender archaeology is here to stay – but hardly a revolution. While my quick survey may be far from a representative study, relying on search engines and sifting through tables of content and abstracts, it suggests that the turn towards gender has had limited impact on mainstream professional practice within archaeology. Journals, even in Britain, are obviously not the places where one would find the energy, results or innovation of gender archaeology. Two decades ago Ericka Engelstad depicted an adversarial tension between feminist theory and postprocessual archaeology, despite their overlaps: ‘Post-processual archaeology's recognition of perspective in all that we do/say/write, combined with a feminist archaeology, opens new and exciting possibilities for archaeological research. But post-processualism should not continue in its present androcentric vein’ (Engelstad Reference Engelstad1991, 512). It would appear her admonition was little-heeded, at least in the realm of journal publications.

Up to this point I have restricted the discussion to gender archaeology. However, the above quotation prompts me to acknowledge the difference between feminist or feminist-inspired archaeology, archaeology of gender, and archaeology focused on women as research subjects. While a number of authors have emphasized the importance of such distinctions (e.g. Gero and Conkey Reference Conkey, Williams and Di Leonardo1991; Conkey and Gero 1997; Conkey and Spector 1984; Cullen Reference Cullen1996; Engelstad Reference Engelstad2007; Hays-Gilpin Reference Hays-Gilpin2000; Marshall Reference Marshall2008; Wylie Reference Wylie2007), others have smoothed over the difference, or even distanced themselves from feminism, arguing that it is either not important, passé or distracting from the larger mission of describing and understanding the past (e.g. Hegmon Reference Hegmon2003; Hill Reference Hill1998; Moore and Scott 1997; Stig Sørensen Reference Stig Sørensen2000). Erica Hill, for example, suggested that ‘an entirely new theoretical framework – what has been loosely termed “feminist” or “gender” theory – is at best an intellectual exercise. At worst, attempts to construct “feminist” theory are a means of further isolating gender issues from mainstream research’ (Hill Reference Hill1998, 100). From the opposite perspective, Barbara Little spelled out the crucial difference between gender and feminism most clearly as early as 1994, with a rare appearance of the word ‘feminism’ in American antiquity:

The ambitions of feminism thus extend beyond adding gender as a checklist item when studying the past.

At present, gender is employed as one of many variables in a range of theoretical approaches employed by archaeologists – Marxist, structural, critical, processual, even evolutionary archaeologies. This creates an interesting dilemma for those convinced of the importance of gender analysis of the past – do we expect, or desire, diversity or unity within a theoretical approach? If diverse views are to be encouraged, are we prepared for true multiplicity of opinion? I come to this question from my current academic home partly based in a Department of Women's Studies, a field that has had to grapple with this question regularly in its very name as a discipline, and faces a continuing political dilemma of the impact of terms like ‘women’, ‘feminism’ and ‘gender’ in the classroom, in publications and in the governing bodies of states (see e.g. Moi Reference Moi2006). Several archaeologists have seriously thought and written about these distinctions, but it remains a fertile topic for discussion across generations and across cultures (see e.g. Conkey and Gero 1997; Engelstad Reference Engelstad2007; Gero Reference Gero2007; Moss Reference Moss2005; Skogstrand 2010). If we wish to encourage a greater awareness of gender as a structuring principle and pursue its investigation in the past, should we aspire to maintain a ‘big tent’ that accommodates everyone, in current American parlance, or should we engage in a more pointed (and hence controversial) discussion of feminism and archaeology?

My initial methodological choice to search for ‘gender’ in mainstream journals was a pragmatic decision, as I suspected that a search for ‘feminism’ as a keyword would probably be very brief. The term ‘gender’ has become normalized, replacing sex as a category even on official forms, thus I expected a far greater publication rate. Yet a second pass reveals feminism to have had a surprisingly resilient, if selective, career in archaeology. It will not come as a surprise to find out that Latin American antiquity stayed away from the term entirely. American antiquity in 20 years published only five articles that seriously engaged feminism, two of which generated spirited, nuanced and fascinating responses. Ian Hodder brought the term into the publication in 1991 in his discussion of ‘interpretive archaeology’, suggesting that feminist critiques fit with postprocessual efforts to destabilize processual scientism. However well meaning Hodder's attempt to include feminism into the postprocessual fold may have been, several authors objected to his refusal to acknowledge explicitly the political nature of feminism, suspecting an unwillingness to engage seriously with feminist theory (Engelstad Reference Engelstad1991; Smith Reference Smith, Balme and Beck1995). As Laurajane Smith stressed, the central aspect of feminism is its inherently political nature, an aspect not reflected in other postprocessual debates at the time. As far as she was concerned, postprocessual introspection did not address equity issues and would only coopt feminists into a perpetuation of the existing system:

Australian women archaeologists in the early 1990s were certainly ready for change and were among the most active groups promoting gender and feminist approaches at the time (see entries in Balme and Beck 1995).

Wylie in 1992 presented one of the earliest extended arguments for a feminist archaeology, and certainly the first one in American antiquity. Arguing that it is far from a political distortion of science, she confidently proclaimed that ‘a feminist perspective, among other critical, explicitly political perspectives, may well enhance the conceptual integrity and empirical adequacy of archaeological knowledge claims, where this is centrally a matter of deploying evidential constraints’ (Wylie, Interplay, 1992, 15). Nonetheless, Fotiadis (Reference Fotiadis1994) and Little (Reference Little1994b) immediately took her to task precisely for this claim, suggesting that Wylie continued to treat knowledge as an intellectual project, one that can be separated from politics and history, ultimately arguing for the possibility of disconnecting truth and politics. In this conception, politics was a pollutant that could be removed from evidence by rigorous methods. As Little (Reference Little1994b, 543) pointed out, the ‘hermaphroditic mind’ that would result in such a project had been a metaphysical metaphor early on in the history of science, one that now forced ‘feminism to defend its rationality and appropriateness’. Almost 10 years later, feminism made another appearance in American antiquity in Michele Hegmon's piece ‘Setting theoretical egos aside. Issues and theory in North American archaeology’ (2003). In a well-intentioned effort to encourage theoretical tolerance on the disciplinary field, Hegmon, while admitting the inspiration and positive influence of feminism, suggested that gender was no longer a domain of postprocessual archaeologies. Rather, gender research had circled back to processual archaeology and adopted rigorous scientific methods and standards, while broadening processual theoretical imagination, resulting in ‘processual-plus’ as the most common theoretical approach among archaeologists in North America. Madonna Moss's response gave feminism a last, spirited defence in the flagship journal of the SAA:

Feminist theory did not crop up in the main disciplinary journals with high frequency. However, in other venues it actually appeared more commonly than gender, an intriguing fact, considering the amount of hostility the word alone can evoke. While I was surprised by the lack of attention to gender in British publications, feminism fared much better, appearing in the Cambridge archaeological journal with predictable regularity in the past 10 years, and totaling 18 articles overall. Book reviews in particular stood out, 39 strong. At least in a cursory survey, on aggregate this journal seems to have engaged archaeology, gender and feminist theory most seriously, giving it more space than any other publication in the English language.

A more unexpected hiding place for feminists and gender theorists turned out to be the Journal of archaeological method and theory. The journal devoted a whole special issue (14(3)) in 2007 to ‘Doing archaeology as feminist’, with seven diverse pieces written by Wylie, Engelstad, Moser, Conkey, Gero, Joyce and Tringham, and the present author, that covered a broad range of issues from theory, method and pedagogy to fieldwork. In addition, between 1998 and 2010 the editors also published an impressive 18 articles that included a discussion or an inclusion of feminist theory (as opposed to a partly overlapping 13 that referenced gender). Among these, Whitridge's (Reference Whitridge2004) piece on the Inuit body landscape imaginaries, and Robb's (Reference Robb2009) on late prehistoric European stelae, personhood and the body, stand out as being particularly creative and serious in their working through gender and feminist theories in detailed, empirical case studies, without necessarily signaling gender in the title.

On the other hand I noticed a curious pattern amid my searches, where an initial result would show a very high frequency of variations on the word ‘feminist’, yet closer inspection would reveal that they were all buried in bibliographies without any extensive engagement or discussion in the text of the article at all (articles in the Journal of social archaeology, for example, seemed to have such citation practice almost as a norm). Whatever the cause, such a muted form of reference would suggest a relatively restricted discussion, as those not familiar with mentioned publications are not invited – or required – to engage with it. Beyond its devotees, feminism would either appear as the theory that dare not speak its name, or perhaps the theory that we can skirt around.

Indeed, had Janet Spector not included the f-word in the title of her book What this awl means. Feminist archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota village (1993), many searches would come up empty, as she takes an honorary place atop most of these lists of references. Thankfully, it is a well-deserved place. With its serious engagement with issues raised by feminists, from questioning categories to explicit discussion of methods and her involvement with descendant communities in Little Rapids, Minnesota, the text remains a classic. In Claassen's enthusiastic words,

I have used the text not only in theory seminars, but also as the final reading in a lithic lab class, after students had spent a semester sorting, washing, describing and categorizing hundreds of stone tools and unrecognizable debris. The book resonated deeply with this world of practice.

Having briefly surveyed some journals, I will now inspect another space where we might expect gender, feminist theory and women as research subjects to appear in significant numbers: conferences and annual meetings. A paper presentation is the classic mode to try out new ideas, mesh research results with creative interpretations and elicit feedback with fewer permanent mental (or physical) scars. The Society for American Archaeology has a digital record of programmes only for the last five years, so the sample is not the same as the 20-year slice of journals. Nonetheless, since we were assured in the Archaeological dialogues editorial in 1998 that gender archaeology was one of the most thriving fields, we might expect that recent years of SAA activity would demonstrate a strong presence of gender topics in sessions, posters and individual papers. Alas, this is not the case. Even compared to journal publications, the dearth of either gender or feminism at major disciplinary meetings is striking. Over five years I could find only seven sessions that featured some version of gender in their title. Two meetings – those held in Atlanta in 2009 and in Austin in 2007 – did not have a single session devoted to either gender or feminism, and out of a total of 411 sessions those years (with five to ten papers per session) only 19 papers addressed gender, and not a single one feminism. As a matter of fact, in all the meetings with thousands of presentations over the past five years only two papers explicitly engaged feminism, beyond a single special session, organized in St Louis in 2010 by archaeologists from Spain. Masculinity appeared once in a paper dealing with the Vikings and queer theory took one brave stand in 2006, as part of a session on the body. These numbers are striking, given that the SAA is generous in accepting submitted papers, sessions and symposia. Thus simple antagonism or discrimination cannot be the cause of this problem. If gender archaeology is now commonplace, why is it not represented in such public fora?

The annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists provides a point of contrast for the American situation. Although the EAA has only about a third of the SAA membership and its annual meetings have been held only since 1994, in every year at least one session has been devoted to gender. If far from the dominant perspective, a gendered approach remains a consistently visible presence. Furthermore, an official working group on gender, run by spirited Spanish and Norwegian feminists, is now active at every annual conference and online (www.upf.edu/materials/fhuma/age/index.html). Despite this relative success, tensions remain. At the EAA meetings in The Hague (2010), Anna Gatti of the University of Uppsala argued that a shift to queer theory would be a distraction for gender archaeologists, as ‘our job is far from done!’ The room was full, participants and audience interrupted each other to speak in disagreement, suggesting that a diversity of theoretical approaches would demonstrate strength. Gatti appeared a lonely advocate for a retrograde cause. My weeks searching for even small traces of gender and feminist theory in journals and conference programmes, however, support her cautionary reminder: gender archaeology has, as yet, only achieved superficial acceptance beyond its core constituencies (see also Conkey and Gero 1997; Lidström Holmberg and Gatti 2009; Skogstrand 2009). With this in mind I now turn to survey the current state of gender and feminism in available books, edited volumes and special conference proceedings to see if the situation is better in these venues. First, however, a brief historical interlude is in order, both to recognize the importance of such settings for the emergence of gender awareness within archaeology and to suggest something about its context.

So last century . . .

As any serious student of history quickly learns, multiple birthplaces of ideas, phenomena or inventions are the norm and a search for ‘origins’ is most often motivated by other goals (Conkey and Williams Reference Conkey, Williams and Di Leonardo1991). Thus it would be most historically accurate to recognize the appearance of gender archaeology as a field across several geographic spaces in the same rough timeframe, even if for different reasons and to diverse responses. It is also important to note the significant role of literature relating gender and feminism to science in general, through which archaeologists could come to recognize common problems of representation, practice and perspective (see e.g. Conkey 2003; Kourany Reference Kourany2002; Schiebinger Reference Schiebinger1999; Strum and Fedigan Reference Strum and Fedigan2000).

From a European perspective, Scandinavia in general and Norway in particular have long stood on the forefront of both gender archaeology and the recognition of women's secondary position in the field. As Skogstrand (2009) points out – women in Norway have been dealing with women's equity issues and gender in archaeology for some 40 years (see also Holm-Olsen and Mandt 1974; Dommasnes 1982; Engelstad, Mandt and Naess 1994). The Norwegian context is interesting in that archaeologists rode a bigger wave of politically mandated and enforced social changes, resulting in a significant increase of women in all professions, as well as among student bodies. Currently some 60 per cent of archaeology students in Norway are women, who moreover enjoy regulated working hours and wages. ‘It is thus perfectly possible to live by and as an archaeological fieldworker even if you have a family and children’ (Skogstrand 2009, 2). Yet as several writers noted, representation in the profession does not immediately or easily translate into a changed disciplinary culture (see e.g. Engelstad 2004; 2007; Skogstrand 2010). Even in Norway, many accounts of the past remain androcentric, and gender issues are addressed overwhelmingly by women archaeologists. A review of 40 years of publishing the Norwegian archaeological review found that only 26 per cent of article authors were female (Bjerck Reference Bjerck2008). Moreover, partly due to language barriers, to networks formed in disconnected global academic and professional circles, most Norwegian publications dealing with gender, feminism and women's issues remain relatively unknown, enjoying limited circulation even among those interested in the subject (for a discussion of the heavy reliance on English in archaeological theory see Tomášková Reference Tomášková2006).

The American emergence of gender archaeology is much better known and is widely cited, and has been at the forefront of what came to define the conceptual field. Conkey and Spector (1984) realistically assessed the bleak situation of gender analysis in archaeology, and the taken-for-granted androcentric representations of the past. The figure of a rational, adapting and successful prehistoric man as the natural driver of all human evolution and progress appeared consistently in stories told in professional and popular publications, enabled by methods of fieldwork, categories formed to interpret material evidence, and language that suggested that prehistoric women were, at best, an afterthought. Consequently Conkey and Spector's piece, Archaeology and the study of gender, resonated widely as a counterweight. It marked one beginning of a new era of social archaeology, wherein research would take into account a diverse range of potential experiences that people of different sex, age and station in past societies might have had. Furthermore, Conkey and Spector situated their point of departure squarely in feminist literature, which by the 1980s had grown common and vibrant in other social sciences and especially in the humanities. It should not, then, come as a complete surprise that when Conkey and Gero reflected on accomplishments a decade later, they accounted for the enthusiastic explosion of gender research: ‘we are impressed by the heretofore unimagined interest, concern, genuine thoughtfulness, and diversity of “results” from the first decade of an explicit attention to gender within archaeology’ (Conkey and Gero 1997, 431). At the same time they noted the deeply ingrained ambivalence towards feminism that seemed prevalent in North American archaeology, especially when compared to cultural anthropology or primatology: ‘feminist anthropology has been shaped by, but also has contributed to, interlinked critiques of essentialism and scientific authority, we are not so sure the same can yet be said for anthropological archaeology’ (ibid., 425). At the time, Janet Spector's What this awl means (1993), discussed above, remained an exceptional example of feminist archaeology in application. Despite generating considerable discussion and interest around the topic of gender, feminism encountered resistance in furthering any disciplinary reorientation, and generated few recognized alternatives to business as usual.

Contrary to the claim that there was no work in the 1990s that offered answers to investigations in gender archaeology, however, one only has to look at the long list of edited volumes and conference proceedings. Gero and Conkey's collection Engendering archaeology (1991) provided one of the earliest set of case studies, dealing creatively, in radically new yet systematic ways, with foodways and domestic space (Hastorf), households and architectural remains (Tringham), labour and pottery production (Wright), weaving and cooking (Brumfiel). Some of the most substantial challenges to a standard archaeological topic – food production – were offered by Watson and Kennedy as well as Claassen, and Jackson. Together they questioned archaeology's basic assumptions about division of labour, and our naturalized vision of active and passive agents in domestication, fishing, hunting or sitting at home:

The weight of evidence brought out to support their hypothesis provided some heavy lifting for years afterwards, considering the authors’ careful and methodical approach. Twenty years later, in 2010, Patty Jo Watson would receive exceptional recognition in the form of a Life Time Achievement award from the Society for American Archaeology. The questions raised by this early wave of gender archaeology thus could indeed prove generative with regard to the past.

The other classic volume from this time worth attention for historical reasons is the Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Chacmool Conference, edited by Walde and Willows as Archaeology of gender (1991). In 1989 the annual Chacmool conference in Calgary, Canada, took the call to action on gender seriously, yet even the organizers were overwhelmed by the response. The text that appeared in print two years later is a testimony to the sense of excitement and energy that many remember with great fondness. The 60 (!) papers in the volume represent a temporal and spatial breath, success, and valiant, if not always necessarily successful, attempts to tackle the topic. However unwieldy, anyone disappointed with the slow progress in gender archaeology should return to this volume, both for the sprawling expanse of its content and for its contagious sense of excitement about the potential future. While the Calgary conference was noteworthy for volume and energy, it was also one of the few meetings dealing with gender attended by a substantial number of men as well as women.

Balme and Beck's edited volume Gendered archaeology (1995) was far more indicative of a trend that later became the norm: women archaeologists addressing gender, while most men shied away from the topic. The proceedings of the Second Australian Women in Archaeology Conference held in 1993 in Armidale, New South Wales, came out of much more explicitly feminist concerns, rooted in a sociopolitical context of Australian society:

Aboriginal struggles for recognition resonated with some aspects of Native American efforts for sovereignty. However, in the American context they have not so easily or simply translated into concerns with gender, particularly not in the 1990s (but see Conkey 2005). Therefore reflecting on the earlier period of gender archaeology, it is important that we remember the diversity, as well as the different constitutive historical contexts, out of which the work emerged.

Gender archaeology in the early 1990s clearly tapped into a well of discontent that was already there and which variants of postprocessual archaeology employed, echoed and magnified. This is where the ad nauseam discussion of bias and conceptual distortion emerged, in a need of a forum and a space. By the 1970s and 1980s women in North America, Australia, South Africa and Western Europe entered archaeology graduate programmes in growing numbers yet lacked a sense of community and a connection. The spark of several seminal papers and conferences ignited an enthusiastic and productive energy that by the late 1990s had plenty to show for itself. The range of interests in gender by the mid-1990s was broad enough that it accommodated a range of diverse issues, including pedagogy, practice, fieldwork and even the first glimpses of masculinity. At the same time, feminism provided an explicit source of inspiration. Wright's edited volume (1996) was one of the early efforts to deliver what feminists preached – making a connection between research, teaching and practice. All contributors to the publication (Bentley, McGaw, Wright, Costin, Brumfiel, Joyce, Romanowicz, Conkey and Tringham, and Gero) were explicit in their effort to avoid the ‘add-women-and-stir’ way of doing gender archaeology, which they felt was starting to take hold in the North American discipline. Yet even in this effort some contributors succeeded more than others. By this time processual archaeologists largely accepted gender as a legitimate category of analysis, but merely by including it on a growing list of potential variables, without significantly altering methods or interpretive frameworks (see e.g. Cowgill Reference Cowgill1993; VanPool and VanPool Reference VanPool and VanPool1999; though strong reactions followed). Feminist objections notwithstanding, the ‘add-women-and-stir’ approach only grew more popular in practice. By the late 1990s it appeared as a formal claim: processual archaeology could easily address gender within existing approaches after only minor adjustments, and no major change was necessary (Hill Reference Hill1998).

In an interesting twist, several well-known feminist archaeologists chose to use the term ‘women’ in the title of their edited books: Claassen and Joyce published the immensely readable Women in prehistory. North America and Mesoamerica (1997), and Hager edited Women in human evolution (1997). Claassen and Joyce addressed the topic of women and gender, suggesting that

Clearly, by the end of the 20th century, writing about women had become quite popular, not only acceptable but even widely welcome. Moreover, from the perspective of feminism it was arguably still necessary. A few years earlier Claassen edited a selection of papers from the same Boone Conference that took place in 1991 – titled Exploring gender through archaeology (1992). The shift from ‘gender’ to ‘women’ in the titles of the two collections and a comparison of the papers in Claassen (1992) and Claassen and Joyce (1997) gives a sense of changing times, the ‘normal science of the archaeology of gender’. No longer is there a paper with such a feisty title as ‘The muted class. Unshackling a tradition’ (Kehoe Reference Kehoe and Claassen1992). Most of us who taught courses in gender archaeology at American universities during this period had to start by introducing the topic every year anew, counter traditional models of human evolution as driven by hunting and aggression, question notions of public and private, dislodge assumptions about division of labour, and offer examples of evidence for humans of either sex as being capable of innovation, action, or passive acceptance of circumstances. If any time was left in the semester one might get to question gender as a concept. Thus Claassen and Joyce's and Hager's texts (both 1997) tapped into a real sentiment about ‘womanist archaeology’ as the pragmatic middle ground, and found a warm welcome, particularly in North America.

While americanist gender archaeology may have retreated from its bolder proclamations, the very fact of its existence helped encourage interesting work in other regions of the world such as Africa, especially South Africa. In her introduction to the collection Gender in African prehistory (1998), Susan Kent noted a simple yet fundamental point relevant to gender archaeology: the power of scholarly volume. ‘Had we spent as much time, money and effort on studying gender and sociopolitical organizations’, she mused, ‘we probably would have as much knowledge about prehistoric gender relations as we currently have about ancient environments’ (Kent 1998, 9). African archaeology of gender was situated in an interesting disciplinary milieu, since research on women and gender had had a strong presence in the fields of African history, political science and sociology since at least the early 1980s (among many publications see e.g. a special issue of the Journal of African history (1983) 24(2), on the ‘History of the family’, or Vaughan Reference Vaughan1983). The temptation of ethnographic analogy was thus far stronger and several contributors to Kent's volume worked carefully through problems of direct historical analogy in African contexts (e.g. entries by Parkington, Gifford-Gonzalez, Stahl and das Dores Cruz). As Stahl and das Dores Cruz (Reference Stahl, das Dores Cruz and Kent1998, 208) warned, however, ‘Archaeological analyses of gender and production often assume an isomorphism between such ethnographic scripts and archaeological patterns of household production and reproduction. Yet historical anthropological studies demonstrate that productive relations may have changed considerably as societies were incorporated into a market economy’. Since uses of ethnographic analogy have remained common in archaeology, we would be well advised to consider this text as a guide to the pitfalls of assuming universal gender arrangements and structures (for a history of the reasoning, uses and reactions see e.g. Fogelin Reference Fogelin2007; Lyman and O'Brien Reference Lyman and O'Brien2001; Wylie Reference Wylie1985). The collection delivered a greater diversity than most published at the time in terms of the temporal span, ranging from Stone Age sites (Parkington, Kent, Wadley, Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen), through the Iron Age (Schmidt, MacLean, Lane, Hall), early pastoralists (Gifford-Gonzalez) to recent historical times (Stahl and das Dores Cruz, Segobye). It also offered a varied spectrum of male and female archaeologists working through their quite different understandings of gender or the need to ‘find women’ in the past. A similar diversity and range, and interesting interpretive approaches, can be found in Lyn Wadley's collection Our gendered past (1997). However, this volume came out in South Africa at an important transformative moment in the history of the country, reflected in the title ‘Our’, with the contributors clearly engaged in a joined project of connecting and transforming the past and the present:

While these two collections may have directly addressed Africanist archaeologists, they remain relevant for anthropological archaeologists the world over. Our gendered past in particular poses interesting questions about science, politics and the connections between the past and the present beyond ethnographic analogies. As in the Australian context, South African archaeologists in this volume not only reintroduced men and women into the narratives about the past, but also questioned basic categories.

While Roberta Gilchrist made an early impression with Gender and archaeology. The archaeology of religious women (1994), her Gender and archaeology. Contesting the past (1999) held appeal far beyond medieval studies, and remains by far one of the most widely used textbooks in gender archaeology. Her clear and succinct overview of gender archaeology in both North America and Britain met with approval by students and instructors alike, even as examples from her own work on medieval gardens and castles offered vivid means to connect the body, space and experience to the gendered reality of 21st-century undergraduates. Gilchrist's work emerged at a time when the earlier questioning of categories and concepts of human nature and sociability also led to serious analyses of the most natural category of all, namely man. Early gender theorists accused processual archaeologists of painting the past with a broad masculine brush, representing male characteristics as human universals. Finally, by the late 1990s British medievalists and classicists (more than anthropological archaeologists) began to question whether these supposedly ‘male characteristics’ were truly universal and applicable to all men across time and space. Foxhall and Salmon (1998) called on historians of ancient Rome and Greece to investigate rather than accept the study of ancient civilization as the ‘history of men’. They were drawing explicitly on feminist theory and on the emerging studies of masculinity, particularly Connell's Masculinities (Reference Connell1995) and Herdt's Third sex, third gender (Reference Herdt1994). While the contributors to When men were men. Masculinity, power and identity in classical antiquity (1998) were historians, the archaeologist Dawn Hadley reached across disciplines to gather work by historians, scholars of medieval literature and archaeologists into an inspiring volume, Masculinity in medieval Europe (1999). Examining the construction and attainment of masculinity through material culture, burial rites and military equipment as well as literature and images, the contributors accepted the premise that ‘a man’ in medieval Europe was not born but had to be made. They provide the reader with fascinating detail of such social processes in Byzantium, England, France, Germany and Italy. Like a number of other volumes discussed earlier, this text deserves a wide readership, particularly among archaeologists who might benefit from questioning such basic categories as men and masculinity, and thereby recognize the social construction of experience. However, this topic seems to have fallen on deaf ears particularly in North America. Knapp (1998a; 1998b) and Caesar (1999), both working in the UK, were at the time the only archaeologists who dared to deal with masculinity as a research topic.

The reception of Knapp's writing in Archaeological dialogues has been addressed earlier. Another archaeologist who attended to the topic was Camilla Caesar, who argued in ‘The construction of masculinity’ (1999), published in Lund archaeological review, for the need to examine the making of masculinity as an impetus for technological, cultural and material change. Suggesting that the question ‘what is masculinity, and how can we understand the construction of masculinity?’ be connected to the central archaeological question ‘how, why and when does cultural change arise?’ (Caesar 1999, 119), Caesar pointed out that conceptions of past masculinities are also tied to contemporary perceptions of gender relations and forms of femininity. Nonetheless, even publications primed to follow this line of reasoning – e.g. a study of military camps and classical antiquity – continued to assume that ‘men were men’ when addressing gender (e.g. Allison Reference Allison2006). A decade later, Lisbeth Skogstrand picked up the thread and pursued the argument in ‘Is androcentric archaeology really about men?’ (2010). Arguing convincingly that androcentric archaeology describes temporally abstracted stereotypes of men rather than real, situated prehistoric men, she posits that men and masculinity should be as much a part of serious feminist archaeology as investigations of women and femininity. The general silence about ‘men’ remains striking and indicative that gender archaeology has settled into a pattern that focuses predominantly on women, despite many claims about gender relations or engendering the past (for one exception see Alberti 2006). The lukewarm response to the topic may also stem from the fact that research on masculinities is unequivocally rooted in feminist theory, a theoretical tradition that has gained relatively little traction in archaeology, particularly in North America.

Living the good life: the state of gender in the 21st century

By the beginning of the 21st century gender archaeology appeared fully domesticated. Many anthropology or archaeology departments at universities in North America and in Western Europe had at least one ‘gender person’ who would periodically teach courses on the topic in response to student interest and demand. While a commendable development, the result was that other archaeologists could comfortably ignore the subject matter in general surveys or introductory courses, or corral it as a ‘speciality’ topic. In terms of publications, the biggest shift from the previous decade appears to have been the emergence of collections defined by subject matter rather than by theoretical framework or regional or chronological focus. Thus a reader could find quite a range of interpretive and methodological approaches united under the subject heading ‘gender and . . .’: material culture (e.g. Allison 2004; Baxter 2005; Donald and Hurcombe, Gender and material culture, 2000; Meskell 2004; Olson 2008), the body (e.g. Joyce 2008; Meskell and Joyce 2003; Rautman 2000), households (e.g. Allison 1999; Montón-Subías and Sanchez-Romero 2008; Roth 2010), social life and death (e.g. Arnold and Wicker 2001; Meskell 2002), rock art (e.g. Hays-Gilpin Reference Hays-Gilpin2004), technology (e.g. Dobres 1995), and a variety of approaches to power (e.g. Crown 2000; Linduff and Rubinson 2008; Nelson 2003; 2004; Sweely 1999). Looking over this long and diverse list makes it very clear that ‘life was good’ as far volume production was concerned, reflecting a wide comfort zone that the topic has achieved.

While perusing these publications, I followed the irresistible impulse of an archaeologist to create typologies, and tried to find a way to group them. However, the task rapidly became unwieldy. While on the surface gender provided an obvious uniting theme for all the tomes, often appearing in the title, closer examination revealed that it quickly diverged into either a return to the early search for ancient women, or an account of the experiences of women in the past, often bearing traces of either the enduring wish to prove women's worth and standing in the past, or alternatively the difficulty of their lives burdened with heavy labour and the forms of social inequality they endured. These are all certainly worthy topics, and often make for a fascinating read. However, 20 years after the initial call to ‘engender’ prehistory, we still seem to be filling in the gaps in the linear traditional story of how the modern ‘us’ came to be, rather than really interrogating the categories of men and women themselves, or broadening the scope of our imagination about how people may have lived differently in times past. While I do not share Hegmon's (2003) enthusiasm for what she terms a ‘processual-plus’ approach, based on my review of publications and conference presentations over the last two decades I have to agree with her that it has emerged as the most dominant form of theory in North American archaeology. Yet as Moss (Reference Moss2005) indicated, picking and choosing from a wide menu of theoretical influences as a form of dessert diminishes, or even eliminates, the tension that led to the formation of such theories in the first place. Classic feminists (or Marxists, for that matter) in other fields would most likely not embrace sweetened versions of theory that downplay conflict, struggle, injustice, the questioning of natural categories or visions of a better future. As fond as I am of many archaeological case studies from which one can learn fascinating details of prehistoric settlement patterns, skeletal deformation, pottery production increase or decline or dietary practices, I find the use of ‘gender’ in such studies unreflective or even at times misleading. Many studies announce their intention to ‘engender’ the topic, yet frequently their actual recipe devolves into ‘add Conkey and Spector (1984) and stir’, with the stirring optional. Lest I sound unfair, a few examples of such an approach are in order. I will also highlight several authors whose work, in my view, represents a more ambitious expansion of the theory that we may all draw upon.

Gender and material culture in archaeological perspective (Donald and Hurcombe 2000) represented one of the most potentially exciting new engagements, one that would combine emerging material-culture studies with a theoretically mature interest in gender. Yet the happy marriage never took place. Most of the studies in the volume remained heavily data-based, and avoided making any broader case for new connections. Upon close inspection, gender simply referred to women and a search for their activities in the past. For example, in a chapter with perhaps the most promising title of all, ‘Fat is a feminist issue’, Marek Zvelebil suggests that in the transition from hunting and gathering to farming,

Whatever the merits of this interesting argument in terms of interpreting the agricultural transition, it ultimately does little to expand the larger archaeological imagination about gender. If a claim that, by first taking up the hoe, women may have controlled some aspect of food production for other than nutritional goals is a feminist issue, then we have a long row ahead of us.

Many collections appearing in the early years of the 21st century included disparate papers of varying strengths, interests or concern with the topic at hand. Rautman's Reading the body (2000) is one such example: Meskell starts the book by summarizing Foucault's The history of sexuality (1984) and reviews some philosophical writing on the topic of the body, while Hollimon describes in gruesome detail the effects of physical labour, violence, and death on women and men among the Arikara in South Dakota; Becker divulges a detailed study of early dentistry and dental appliances among Etruscan women; and Lee endeavours to read dress from Minoan art using contemporary ‘dress theory’. For all that any archaeologist will surely benefit from reading the text – I, for one, certainly learned many new facts – we may nonetheless wonder what connects these disparate case studies theoretically. Under the banner of gender archaeology, readers carry on quietly with their own understanding of the term, rather than re-engaging it through considered discussion.

In the introduction to Gender and the archaeology of death (2001), a selection of papers from a Gender and Archaeology conference in 1998, Arnold and Wicker do address the problem of gender as a ‘special’ area of inquiry, justified by the still-prevalent androcentric bias in archaeology, and the ongoing counterweight development of ‘gender theory’. While we do not find out precisely what this theory might entail, the inclusion of several younger scholars in the volume results in some daring investigations of gender as ‘the cultural interpretation of sexual difference that results in the categorization of individuals, artefacts, spaces and bodies’ (Gilchrist 1999, xv, stress added). For example, Emily Weglian offers an analysis of a Late Neolithic, Early Bronze Age cemetery in present-day Germany in order to argue for a social system with more than two genders, with ‘flexible categories’ expanding beyond the normative categories of male and female (Weglian Reference Weglian, Arnold and Wicker2001, 153). In this same collection of papers Hollimon's Arikara study makes another appearance, but this time she refreshingly reconsiders her own work:

Whether or not the Arikara women displayed agency in the form of a fighting spirit, the larger lesson from the chapter is its reminder that even the same author can look at the same data with new conceptual tools and theoretical frameworks and arrive at a significantly different interpretation. If gender archaeology is to make headway, reconsiderations like this are essential, as they demonstrate the ambiguity of all interpretations even when supported with rigorous methods and scientific techniques. Different questions may lead to different perceptions of the past. Yet even in this edited collection the majority of the papers move only one step further from the initial task of seeking women, to that of seeking feisty, energetic, adventuresome women under the umbrella of ‘gender’.

With Ancient Maya women (Ardren 2002) it is quite clear that a recovery of ‘ancient Maya women’ is the goal of all the papers. They prove an interesting group, fully engaged with all kinds of predictable things in life – they marry, they have children, they farm, they are sacrificed and they are excluded from various activities when young but allowed to participate when old. Still, they die younger than men, while poor people die even younger still. The Maya also suffer from an embarrassment of archaeological riches; the volume overflows with evidence gleaned from the archaeological record: inscriptions, iconography and ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts. As an unintended consequence this collection offers little to a broader theoretical consideration of gender; the authors delight in their data and perceive little need to engage with larger questions of categories. As much as everyone will learn about fascinating forms of male–female complimentarity in the chapters by Linda Stephen Neff or Marilyn Beaudry-Corbett and Sharisse McCafferty, any broader comparative point will have to be made separately, or elsewhere. While considering the lives of women in any ancient society makes for lively archaeological reading, the Mayans appear relatively untouched by conceptual issues in gender studies.

It was then with great anticipation that I reached for Roth's recent edited volume Engendering households in the prehistoric Southwest (2010). Households were all the craze of North American archaeology in the 1980s and 1990s. By shifting the scale of research from large regional studies to more manageable small-scale forms, archaeologists could potentially recall that it was a human and social science, discovering, in Ruth Tringham's words, ‘households with faces’ (Reference Tringham, Conkey and Gero1991). Julia Hendon's closing chapter of the book, ‘Household archaeology and the study of gender’, serves as a perfect guide to what could happen when one considers gender and household. As she reminds the reader, household is not only an economic unit – the approach still dominating even this collection of papers – but also a community of social life, ‘coresident communities of practice’ (Hendon Reference Hendon2010, 264). In one of the more creative chapters in the volume, Jeannette Mobley-Tanaka in ‘Households, communities and social reorganization’ comes closest to claiming a critical role for these community networks and their wishes and desires (though she does not use those words), suggesting that they may have been the true undercurrents to a ‘long-distance move when environmental and social conditions in the Mesa Verde area made aggregated life untenable there’ (Mobley-Tanaka Reference Mobley-Tanaka2010, 49). Yet after making this potentially bold pronouncement the author retreats to more familiar forces of change (social stress and competition), without spelling out what one is to imagine in such words in terms of gender and a household full of real live human beings. In many ways chapters in this recent collection are excellent studies, methodically thorough contributions to the archaeology of the American Southwest. Yet they all remain timid when it comes to interpretive or theoretical points, and distinctly shy about actually imagining the specifics of the lives of the people they write about, and thereby reimagining categories in ways that might resonate beyond the particular case. In 2010 it would appear that much of the gender literature published in North America continues to concentrate on salvaging the lives of ancient women. However fascinating or unbearable, in our accounts those lives frequently resemble modern experience, assuming similar forms of individual agency, productivity, division of labour and rationality.

Nonetheless, a decade into the 21st century, archaeologists interested in gender from a range of perspectives can turn to the monumental Gender and Archaeology series edited by Sarah Nelson. The Handbook of gender in archaeology (2006) is the most impressive installment of the whole lineup. Close to a thousand pages long, the volume tackles theoretical and thematic issues, including ‘Methods in feminist and gender archaeology. A feeling for difference – and likeness’ by Elizabeth Brumfiel; ‘Feminist theory and gender research in historical archaeology’ and ‘Feminist gender research in classical archaeology’, both by Suzanne Spencer-Wood; a comprehensive review of gender and household archaeology by Julia Hendon, gender and landscape by Wendy Ashmore and gender, hierarchy and heterarchy by Janet Levy; and a refreshingly sophisticated chapter by Katherine Weedman on ‘Gender and ethnoarchaeology’. Sexuality (Barbara Voss), personhood (Bonnie Clark and Laurie Wilkie), masculinity (Benjamin Alberti), and nonbinary genders (Sandra Hollimon) all get their turn in the second part of the volume under ‘Identities’. Judging from the broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives of the contributors, everyone will find something to like in these pages. If substantive topics or theory may not capture your attention, ‘subsistence strategies’ (Part III) or ‘World regions’ (Part IV) will do the trick. This is not the type of edited volume that one reads by the fire on a snowy winter evening in one sitting, but it certainly is a collection that every archaeologist even marginally interested in gender should have on her bookshelf for regular consultation. Nelson's introduction largely rehearses a standard history of gender archaeology. Her perceptions of ‘Controversies in gender archaeology’, however, cogently summarize its continuing dilemmas:

If the total picture proves too overwhelming, the chapters from The handbook of gender in archaeology (2006) are also available in three separate volumes: Identity and subsistence. Gender strategies for archaeology (2007), Worlds of gender. The archaeology of women's lives around the globe (2007) and Women in antiquity. Theoretical approaches to gender and archaeology (2007), making it accessible to a much wider audience. Given the scale of this collective achievement, gender is clearly visible on the archaeological landscape. In that sense, the first decade of the century ends on a note of solid accomplishment.

What do gender archaeologists want?

In conclusion, I wish to return to my initial inquiry about the health of gender archaeology. ‘Gender’ is clearly a successful topic area with numerous volumes and plenty of interesting case studies. Yet the initial inspiration from feminist theory developed a parallel life, particularly in North America where many avoided even the term for fear of polluting science with politics. The question that I am often asked – and that I ask myself – is, what do archaeologists of gender want? To go about our business as usual, looking for past ancestors? Or also to put into question both ourselves and the discipline we inhabit? Over a decade ago an Archaeological dialogues editorial bemoaned a shortage of substantive studies amid endless discussions of conceptual issues. On the one hand, after examining all these volumes, I feel confident in saying that there are hundreds of pages of ‘substantive research studies’ conducted in the name of gender across archaeology. Yet on the other hand I also wish to step back and defend the narrative form of a question. Feminist theory has raised a number of questions about the position of women and men in a society, about the distinctions between public and private, personal and political, and ultimately about our most elemental assumptions regarding sex and human nature. A question is a grammatical structure in formal language, but it also provides a way of expressing a surprise, uncertainty, discontent, concern, lack of understanding, or disagreement with the normative form. Asking a question can be a way of expressing an opinion, or an invitation to dialogue, where disagreement may yield new insights. Thus the accusation that feminist archaeology merely raises questions without answering them is a fundamental misunderstanding of the process of engagement, particularly engagement that refuses to take the received order as a natural given.

In questioning categories, feminist archaeologists are suggesting the possibility of a substantial difference between the past and the present, one that might resonate in both directions. Sofia Voutsaki's recent piece (Reference Voutsaki2010) on personhood and agency published in this journal is one such example. While grappling with the notion of a moral ‘dividual’, she forces her readers to think seriously about what makes a person, and how that category might be defined through a community rather than a self. Narratives about the past are always narratives about the present as well. By avoiding the political nature of what we do, are we shirking our responsibility towards our students, our communities and, indeed, our science?