Grit Tempered: Early Women Archaeologists in the Southeastern United States (review)

Grit-Tempered: Early Women Archaeologists in the Southeastern United States. Edited by Nancy Marie White, Lynne P. Sullivan, and Rochelle A. Marrinan. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. xviii + 392 pp., foreword, preface, bibliography, index. $49.95 cloth.)

Grit-Tempered describes the fascinating lives of female archaeologists in the southeastern United States. These biographical sketches highlight the diverse roles of women in the region’s archaeology, the social context in which they worked, and their many accomplishments in research and public education. Lynne Sullivan’s chapter does an especially good job of establishing the broader social context for the life of one pioneering female archaeologist as well as the politics of large-scale public archaeology.

Several trends in career trajectories are evident over time. In the early twentieth century, women often assisted their husbands in their professional endeavors. During the New Deal era of the 1930s, few women worked in the field, although black women were hired to excavate the Irene Mound in Georgia. Some women, such as Madeline Kneberg Lewis, supervised lab work, but they seldom received equal recognition for their efforts. By the mid–twentieth century, some women had achieved professional status in southeastern U.S. archaeology, including Lewis, who became a professor at the University of Tennessee. But others were relegated to peripheral, often unpaid positions. Adelaide Bullen, for example, contributed to Florida and Caribbean archaeology with her husband but never received a salary despite her thirty years at the Florida State Museum. Professional opportunities were greater for the next generation. Hester Davis has been the Arkansas state archaeologist since 1967. Carol Mason, Elizabeth Wing, and Patty Jo Watson are university professors who have rightly earned professional recognition for their significant contributions to Great Lakes archaeology, zooarchaeology, and agricultural origins, respectively. Yet, all three women held part-time faculty or museum positions for part of the time when their children were young.

These biographies defy long-standing stereotypes that women have not been active in the field and that women are best suited to laboratory work. During the 1920s, Margaret Ashley excavated sites in Georgia. Bettye Broyles is best known for her influential fieldwork at numerous sites during her years with the West Virginia Geological Survey. Martha Rolingson began her career surveying for Paleo-Indian sites in Kentucky and is now directing research at the Toltec Mounds in Arkansas. Watson tackled the rigorous conditions of Salts Cave and has worked at the Green River shell middens in Kentucky. But it is also true that some individuals, including Elizabeth Wing, pioneered lab-based specialties. Thus women have made their presence known throughout the entire spectrum of archaeological activities.

The editors wanted to document not only the achievements of women in southeastern U.S. archaeology but also the gender discrimination that often resulted in minimal recognition of their contributions or less professionally satisfying roles. Yet, many of the subjects of this book denied that discrimination strongly restricted their careers, or they stressed the support they received from certain male archaeologists, emphasizing the positive aspects of their career choices and their determination to do archaeology. It is nonetheless difficult to assess the impact of gender discrimination in the profession because the sample consists mostly of women who successfully carved out places for themselves.

Most of these women devoted considerable effort toward promoting public awareness of archaeology and site preservation and were doing so long before the importance of such efforts was widely recognized in the profession. For instance, Isabel Garrad Patterson used her social status in the community to provide support and publicity for professional archaeologists in Georgia. Davis has played a leading role in lobbying for important site preservation legislation at both the state and national level.

The accomplishments of these women outside of archaeology attest to their incredible energy, which may explain why many of them succeeded despite obstacles. For instance, Lewis studied to be an opera singer, nurse, and doctor before finally turning to archaeology. Mason trains border collies, while...