Girl Archaeologist: Sisterhood in a Sexist Profession

by Alice Beck Kehoe

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Archaeology, Feminism

230 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2022

Reviews

[Lizzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

thank you to my supervisor for lending me this because she knows how much i like bad books. you were right catherine this book sucks

[Maladjets · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting story on what it means to be a critical female scientist in the larger part of the 20th century. And how culture and society shape opportunities and facts. The main lesson I toke from it: we all are and always have been just human.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always enjoy hearing the stories from the old guard archaeologists, and this was no exception. It's fairly well known these days that the women were a lot of the power behind the big names of archaeology back in the day. In this book, Alice doesn't hold back but rather presents how things were with a bit of emotional detachment that provides insight into how far we've come.

[bob]

Follows gathered thoughts, rather than chronological timeline, which can be a little confusing. Interesting story.

[Sydney Sundell · Rating 2 out of 5]

My hopes were so high for this book but as my partner so perfectly put it : "White women do be white womening"

The structure and organization of this book is needlessly complicated and not in chronological order. As a result the reader gets told the same story and details multiple times with inconsistencies here and there. The author seems to rely heavily on the "back in my day" and "that's just how it was" stuff. If you have the audacity to live this long and publish a book in these times then you ought to update your views to the 21st century. She claims that all people should be treated equally and yet makes several off hand negative comments about gay people, one to the effect of "why should gay men get to do archaeology when I can't." Based on this and her conspicuous lack of mentioning trans/non binary folks, I am left with a bad taste in my queer little mouth. Obviously it's an important story to hear and 100% more valuable than any straight white man's, I just think that this author needs to do more introspection on the changing world we live in and don't bring up queer folks if you aren't going to clarify your views on the matter and the nuances of the time. Where were you during Stonewall? Did you even notice? Maybe talk about it over brunch with JK Rowling.

Also red flag: If this bitch says "Nevertheless, (insert pronoun) persisted." I'm gonna lose it.

[Patty Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was familiar with Alice Beck Kehoe through her book Shamans and Religion, which I used when I was teaching university-level anthropology of religion courses. When I saw the title of this one, I knew I had to get it, as I had already been retrospectively ruminating on my own encounters with sexism and misogyny throughout my anthropological career. Girl Archaeologist is unlikely to be understood by people born in the twenty-first century (as evidenced by some of the reviews here on Goodreads, which are laughably presentist). Yes, the organization is a bit haphazard/stream-of-consciousness, it is repetitive at times, and her tone is cantankerous; but her career arc is fascinating, starting in the 1950s and stretching all the way to the 2020s (and still going–yes, she did persist, nevertheless). I found much to commiserate with (I especially love the way she dismisses Lewis Binford as a pseudoscientist, which he was). Anthropologists of any generation, but especially those who came of age in the twentieth century, will find much to enjoy in this book. Everyone else–whatever.