A few years back there was a survey of archaeologists to determine the 25 Grand Challenges that archaeology could help solve…That survey was pretty specific about what they considered ‘Grand Challenges’:
‘The Web survey defined grand challenges to be fundamental problems in science and explicitly excluded “disciplinary challenges with respect to the practice of archaeology, such as changes in financial and legal frameworks.” Nonetheless, about 40 percent (77) of the responses related to this excluded class…
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40% of responses excluded!
I agree with Doug… if 40% of the people responding thought archaeology’s grand challenges had to do with the practice of archaeology, maybe we should pay some attention to that.
Sure, I could say that the archaeology sex and gender needs to “solve” how to identify different sexes unambiguously. Or maybe, we need to identify when women came to be excluded from power. Or why men are wired to have multiple sexual partners while women are not.
Except I not only don’t see those as “grand challenges”, I see them as errors in fundamental thinking. If you start by assuming that sex is an unambiguous (usually, binary) attribute that remains stable for all human societies (let alone in a person’s own life) then you might be able to find some very narrow way to define “sex”. But sex/gender is more variable, fluid, and contextual than that. So knowing who “really” was male or female wouldn’t automatically unlock the gates to some great insight into human nature.
And all those propositions that take the binary of male/female for granted and propose that “men are…” or “women have always been…” are just crying out to be falsified by the glorious richness of real human histories.
And that is what I think is the Grand Challenge for the archaeology of sex and gender. How can we get our actual knowledge out there, both to our colleagues, and to the broader public? How can we get compelling news stories told that don’t rest on tired cliches that reinforce ideas about gender hierarchy, about sexuality, about sexual identity?
Even when the researchers say that their work debunks stereotypes, news articles lead with headlines using words like “surprising“. Even when research actually shows that sex or gender is not the primary basis of differences between human groups, media coverage seizes on an easily-understood (because assumed to be universal) binary division between male and female.
My own approach has been to use humor about the stereotypes that often lead news coverage of research, and then branch to what the researchers actually said and how that might change the stereotypes. But as blogger Jason Antrosio noted in a comment on one of my funny blog posts, perhaps our greatest worry should be the supposedly serious media coverage in places like the New York Times:
In some ways, I prefer the screaming headlines about ancient men holding babies to Wade’s approach, which seems to most emphasize male dominance and hierarchy. This Wade sentence seemed particularly disturbing: “The joint ancestor of chimps and humans lived about five million years ago and is often assumed to have had a chimplike social structure, with a male hierarchy, promiscuous mating by the females and all-out war between neighboring bands.” I’m not a primatologist, but I think Wade is amplifying some very dated and debated assumptions.
I agreed, and wrote about the issue in more detail, as part of my commitment to potentially changing the way the media talks about our field– and especially, in this case, about sex and gender and human personhood in the past.
But things really haven’t changed. The same stereotypes frame news coverage.
So what can we do?
Among other things, use multiple media to engage. I have advocated using twitter and blogs to get our take on research, especially as presented at conferences, out there.
And be media-available. Even if you know that it is likely that your work will be boiled down to “it’s an exciting discovery“, there is that possibility of (in my experience) twice-in-a-lifetime uptake by science reporters who actually get it.
And be media-appreciative. Identifying good coverage is as important as calling out the wildly stereotypic.
There is a limit to what any individual person can do. But we are not alone. That’s what it means to be part of a discipline. And here, the news is, I think, incredibly promising. After a long period during which anthropology and archaeology mainly reacted to popular press, we finally have our own popular website aimed at intervening in debates: Sapiens.
Lots of archaeologists there, and an open invitation to consider contributing. And also a challenge: Sapiens will work as a platform only if all of us working independently continue to create rich content and develop audiences that want to know more.
At this point, it is clear to me that our greatest challenge is not writing the next book about archaeology of sex and gender. (Although there are great new books coming down the line, especially dealing with queer theory.) Nor is it getting students to take classes about this content. We are out there teaching courses across the country and the globe, and students are there engaging and debating the latest research and challenging how we talk about it.
No; our greatest challenge is shifting the public debates. If we can intervene there, we can change minds. We can get archaeologists recognized as experts whose views merit publication as Op-Ed pieces. We might even move archaeology from cable channel comedy talk show fodder to network late night feature.
As long as our 7 minutes 7 or 44 seconds of fame don’t come at the expense of the complexity of what we know, then archaeology will have met its greatest challenge.
Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives 
Smiti Nathan
February 2, 2016
I absolutely loved this post. I found myself nodding and saying ‘yes’ out loud as I read it. Thanks for sharing!
Sarah M. Bess
February 11, 2016
Great post! I agree with you that we need to change the dominant archaeological discourse on sex and gender. I don’t think we can effectively do that, however, while our discourse remains overwhelmingly dominated by the voices of cisgender, hetersexual men. We need more trans and queer voices in archaeology speaking for and about trans and queer experiences, but that means overcoming largely practical barriers. Currently, many universities are actively hostile to the participation of trans students and faculty through the denial of healthcare and other bureaucratic structures of violence, sex and gender are still taught in anthropology classrooms in ways that alienate and silence trans and queer students, and standard archaeological field practices often exclude trans and queer participants. As a discipline, we cannot speak for queer experiences in the past while we are actively hostile to queer identities in the present.
Rosemary Joyce
February 11, 2016
Dear Sarah,
Thanks for reading and commenting here. You are of course right that universities are not yet adjusting well to the realities of our world; and that this perpetuates exclusion of a wide spectrum of persons. In my time at Berkeley I have seen the passage of trans-friendly policies, the intent to implement ways to allow students to specify their own name so that course systems do not force them to use birth names no longer part of their identity, and recently, a struggle to get campus to provide universal access to restrooms that are safe and convenient. None of that came easily, but it all came or is coming. So I am optimistic, because people speaking out and noting the inequity are being heard, and allies are joining to argue to change our practices. If you have not seen the description by Erin Rodriguez and Kat Eichner of their field school at Ft Davis, Texas, look for it; they created the single best model I have seen to avoid exclusion of all kinds. We have much work to do. (I include myself, as in teaching my Archaeology of Sex and Gender course, despite an explicit commitment to showing that there is no single norm of sex/gender, I have struggled to find ways to bring a mixed body of students into dialogue in ways that neither marginalize nor exoticize queer and trans participants). But we are going forward, I truly believe.
Sarah M. Bess
February 12, 2016
I worry that a metanarrative of progress with regard to trans civil rights, when constructed from a cis perspective, obscures the reality of ongoing struggles. At the same time, I’m glad to hear that there have been practical improvements at Berkley.
I will definitely check out the Ft. Davis project (I found their blog). Field inclusivity is something that I have been thinking about a lot. Thanks!
Rosemary Joyce
February 12, 2016
I understand the issue of representation you raise here. But the progress I am relating at Berkeley is the hard-fought product of the broad LBGTQ community here, which managed to gain a remarkable level of visibility for issues that were important to the trans and queer community, including through a committee advising the then-Chancellor. I am an ally, and I think pointing to the successes made by action within university systems is important as a model for activists elsewhere. I do not in any way wish to diminish your own struggle or that of others.