User:YumoLu/Feminist Archaeology

I plan to

1) add a paragraph summarizing Black Feminist Archaeology's methodology as well as the Hermitage site (by Battle-Baptiste) under the Historical Archaeology section; ☑️

2) add a new section "The Study of Sexuality" under "Ongoing feminist contributions to archaeology." And talk about using feminist lens to understand sexuality in archaeology (some articles by Barbara L. Voss); ☑️

3) add more information to "The Study of Masculinity" section. ☑️

Article Draft for Peer Review
Lead:

Feminist archaeology employs a feminist perspective in interpreting past societies. It often focuses on gender, but also considers gender in tandem with other factors, such as sexuality, race, or class. Feminist archaeology has critiqued the uncritical application of modern, Western norms and values to past societies. It is additionally concerned with increasing the representation of women in the discipline of archaeology, and reducing androcentric bias  within the field.

Feminist archaeology has expanded in recent years to include intersectional analyses such as Black Feminist archaeology, Indigenous archaeology, and post-colonial archaeology. It also began to pay more attention to household studies, the study of masculinity, and the study of sexuality. [added this last sentence to the original lead section]

Historical Archaeology
 [rewrote the first paragraph to add more details in BFA methodology] 

 [added these before original two large chunks of words] 

Whitney Battle-Baptiste, a proponent of Black Feminist Archaeology (BFA), talks about the theories and methodology of Black Feminist Archaeology in her book Black Feminist Archaeology. According to Battle-Baptiste, BFA focuses on "the intersectionality of race, gender, and class" and the doubled or tripled form of oppression due to one's multiple identities. BFA researches into the past with the goal of connecting it to present-day racism and sexism. BFA seeks to combine traditional archaeology's strict material analysis with nearby historical and contemporary communities' cultural landscapes. Aided by these methods, Black Feminist Archaeology has the potential to diversify the questions asked and knowledge produced in archaeology. The Hermitage Plantation in Tennessee, Lucy Foster's homesite in Massachusetts, and W.E.B. Du Bois' boyhood homesite in Massachusetts are examples Battle-Baptiste used to demonstrate the Black Feminist Archaeological approach to historical sites.

The Hermitage Plantation belonged to the seventh president Andrew Jackson, which had more than 160 slaves. In her research, Battle-Baptiste not only examines the physical landscape of the Hermitage but also delves into the cultural meanings, socialization processes, and Black agency within the space. Exploring the domestic sphere with an emphasis on race, she demonstrates that the types of domestic works captive women did differ from those of the European women. Relying on elder generations' social memory, Battle-Baptiste suggests that home is not the "four walls of a twenty foot dwelling." It extends into larger environment to incorporate the yard, and it is a place for people "to regroup, to learn strategies of survival, find strength, and create thoughts of resistance."

The study of masculinity
 [added after the original paragraph] 

Inspired by the feminist trend, some archaeologists began to reflect on Archaeology as a discipline itself. Feminist critics lists three types of androcentrism exists in archaeology: 1) focusing on presumed male roles such as hunter, warrior, chief, and farmers; 2) under-analyzing in activities/processes considered to be in the female domain by western tradition; 3) interpreting data "through the eyes of middle-age, middle-class, western white men."  If androcentrism in archaeology is not addressed and if humans are not seen as gendered, archaeologists will miss the truth due to repeated reproduction of modern gender stereotypes. Following this trend, archaeologists challenge the hypothesis that, in ancient societies, women were always the gathers while men were the hunters. Maritime archaeology has also began to reflect on itself as a strongly masculine archaeology subfield. Oftentimes, maritime archaeology studies warfare, shipwrecks, and sea battles, leaving the social aspects of maritime life marginalized and unexplored. Maritime archaeologists interpretations of the pasts also fail to "acknowledge there are other ways to be male and female." Considering the vastness of sea and the great potential of maritime archaeology, scholar Jesse Ransley advocate for the queering of maritime archaeology.

The study of sexuality
 [added this section parallel to BFA, household studies, and the study of masculinity] 

Before 1990s, there isn't a lot of archaeological research dealing with sexuality. Entering into the 2000s, more research apply feminist theory and queer theory to study reproduction management, sexual representations, sexual identities, prostitution, and the sexual politics of institutions. For example, B.L Voss challenges the St. Augustine Pattern in colonial period by applying postcolonial and poststructural feminist theories. She examine the applicability of St. Augustine Pattern from six aspects of life and concludes that this pattern reduce the complexity of colonial history.

Message left at Feminist Archaeology Talk Page

 * works are needed to shorten the Lucy Forster's two paragraphs (too detailed)
 * perhaps start a Lucy Forster wiki page