Well that was an interesting customer. A young Spanish chap who was looking for archaeology and specifically a Spanish female archaeologist whose name I couldn't quite catch because his accent was rather thick. With a lot of hand-waving he told me about ths woman, that it is very hard to find her work because her interpretation of finds (the cast she puts on the past? shut up carol..) is considered heretical amongst her male counterparts and in fact in Spanish society generally. She challenges the accepted view that women were the stay-at-homes, looking after the hearth and the babies. I found a web site that talks in the same way so I suppose there to be a revolution in thought happening in archeology just now, not just in Spain either.
"The absence of the female voice in Spanish archaeologically directly impacts how women are perceived in the archaeological record. A chauvinistic view is persistent and feeds the androcentric, western perspective that states men have always been dominant and women submissive in every matter."
...and from the same site (which does seem to be strongly female power driven but still may have a point..)
"The roles women play in archaeology cannot be easily dismissed. Although often marginalized and not accepted as "real" archaeologists, women working in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia are making great strides in giving women a voice in the archaeological record. That gendered voice, the voice that looks beyond the idea that only men made contributions to prehistory and history, will not stay silent as long as women continue to examine the data with a eye towards recognizing the accomplishments of the women who came before them, both in the field of anthropology and in the distance past of humanity."
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