Probing the Gendered History of Aegean Survey Archaeology

It is probably safe to say that at one time or another, most Aegean survey archaeologists have sketched out genealogical relationships "on the back of an envelope." It was an interesting exercise but never seemed to quite capture reality as relationships became more complex and alternative factors had to be considered. Michael Loy has made a serious attempt to reconstruct the networks that form among colleagues, as well as advisors and their students, in order to demonstrate that such networks have guided the idiosyncratic evolution of survey methods in the Aegean. Loy focuses on collection strategy, and a few other parameters presented in an accompanying table, as representative of the transmission of practice through these networks. Grace Erny and Melanie Godsey, two experienced female survey archaeologists, take this analysis in a different direction, joining Loy's networks with data on the gender of survey directors to show the deleterious consequences of these mostly male "familial" relationships for women aspiring to work in this field.

It is perhaps appropriate to offer a few brief comments on Loy's model to place the response by Erny and Godsey in sharper perspective. Given that models are simplified representations of complex realities, Loy acknowledges that many other factors besides "descent with modification" are at play and that genealogy doesn't explain everything about field methods. Like many a broad-brush approach, there is a fair amount of truth to Loy's model. Indisputably, there have been powerful groups that, through their proliferation on the ground and advocacy in print, have strongly influenced the shape of survey archaeology in the Aegean. Just as surely, however, much complexity and nuance are missed when the focus is placed exclusively on directors, even within the limited scope of field methods. More importantly, Erny and Godsey remind us that there is much more at stake than field methods alone.

One need not probe too deeply to reveal that the networks of survey practitioners, even if only considering the level of director, are far more numerous and complex than represented in Loy's model. Loy would not disagree with this, but I believe his analysis misses the key point that survey methods are often substantially shaped by reading outside of one's networks, within the Aegean tradition and beyond. Reflecting on my own experience, I might say that I am a product of both a "Jameson-Southern Argolid" network through Curtis Runnels and Daniel Pullen and a "Sydney-Cyprus" network through Tim Gregory. But throughout the process of learning and subsequently designing survey projects,¹ my theoretical and methodological approaches were profoundly influenced by published results and think pieces. Although I never worked within the Cherry-Davis or Bintliff-Snodgrass networks, I adopted many elements of their survey practice. Simultaneously, the Americanist survey literature offered alternative ways of addressing the surface record. This "out of network" input adds a further layer of complexity to the replication of methods in peer-to-peer and mentor-mentee networks.

Erny and Godsey rightly question the extreme top-down nature of Loy's "descent with modification" model, most cogently because it minimizes the role of non-director collaborators in shaping field methods and disregards their fundamental contributions to the narratives a project produces. In a recent blog post, experienced survey hand William Caraher writes: "A more subtle reading of survey projects (which would involve more complex genealogies that extended well below the level of project director) would reveal a more dynamic space for the foment and transmission of ideas."² In the same post, Caraher recalls conversations I (as field director of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey) had with him, David Pettegrew, and Dimitri Nakassis about survey methods. Although he characterizes them facetiously as "long, undoubtedly annoying," these three brilliant young archaeologists, all of whom have gone on to direct surveys of their own, pushed me to justify my thinking, contributed their own ideas and solutions, and influenced the course of the project. Thus, apart from what the project directors (Tim Gregory and Daniel Pullen) brought from their work in Greece and Cyprus, negotiation effectively flowed across multiple hierarchical levels...