Amanda Adams Read Free Page A

language never seen before? Perhaps a new link in the evolutionary chain of our species, a link with a wing nub instead of a shoulder blade? What if we find a buried wooden boat preserved in a bog that dates so far back that all the theories of human migration to the New World will need to be rewritten? Archaeology is uniquely, and consistently, able to renew and sometimes redefine our understanding of ourselves.
    As Amelia Edwards remarked in 1842 , archaeology is that subject where “the interest never flags—the subject never stales—the mine is never exhausted.” 8 Archaeology never stales because it keeps reinventing the big story of us.
    The archaeological field is a centerpiece to each pioneer’s story. Each woman found her way to some very out of the way places, circa 1900, in the name of her research and study: Iraq, Iran, Crete, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Gibraltar, Mexico. Often the field called to her with its own type of siren’s song, a tune mingling mysteries of earth and history on a breeze. Today the field continues to beckon adventurous souls curious about where we’ve been and where we’re going. The study of the past is nearly universal, and although each culture has a unique way of embracing and explaining its own history, archaeologists are a self-selecting crowd. They have their own particular, even peculiar toolkit and a strong desire to dig for history’s precious leftovers.
    LEFT: Necklace, bracelets, and fragment of decorated pottery
RIGHT: Earthenware vessel and stone artifacts
    Before the skies were filled with airplanes that could get you there and back, archaeology meant going off into strange places with only what a team could carry. Archaeologists would leave in search of something that might lie hidden beneath piles of dirt. Shovel in hand, they would chase that dream of discovery, becoming crazed and toilsome if it wasn’t found, brilliant and celebrated if it was. Despite its glamorous image, archaeology is hard work: dirty, muddy, sand-in-your-eyes, exhausting, inconvenient, and on occasion boring work. Not everyone’s cup of tea, especially in the days of Victorian England when sipping tea was exactly what a lady was supposed to be doing.
    Yet when they returned from the field, it was beyond dispute that the first women archaeologists had held their own physically and intellectually in what was then a man’s world. They had traveled, dug, scrutinized sites, managed, and made it. Impressive. So impressive that these women are sometimes in danger of being transformed into myth. Although I have boundless admiration for each of the women chronicled here, I try to avoid giving in to pure romanticism. The greatest honor is in keeping it honest. When you are working in the field you want your notes to be as accurate as possible, your maps as precise as can be, so that your reconstructions and interpretations are reliable. I aim for the same here. Legends can become the stuff of make-believe, overshadowing the realities and nuances of a true life.
    These early archaeologists were never camelback saints (and they would be dull if they were). They were products of their time and made choices that by today’s standards would elicit criticism and might even be judged as politically incorrect. In some cases they chose to play very much in a man’s world and occasionally viewed other women, in popular patriarchal fashion, as dithering inferiors instead of comrades. They present sometimes frustrating contradictions that both support and undermine a feminist view. Complex individuals, they challenge us, as they once challenged their own peers and colleagues, to take them as they are.
    With that in mind I ceremoniously opened an old archaeological field-journal of mine one breezy bayside day in northern California and invited the ladies in. Come on down, drink coffee with me, spread your old maps out on my desk, and let’s make a book together. I asked them into my small studio, encouraged