In honor of mothers everywhere, this week's Archaeology at Home theme centers around women in archaeology, past and present.
Warm up with the Great Goddesses Crash Course (10 minute video) and then dive in to learn about warrior women in this talk given at UC Berkeley's Tang Center for Silk Road Studies last fall: Ancient Amazons: Warrior Women in Myth, Art, and Archaeology (Adrienne Mayor from Stanford University). As a preview to the full lecture, here's a recent 4-minute interview with Adrienne Mayor on NPR.
If you have time for another 45-minute lecture, check out Did God have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (a 2014 lecture by Bill Dever) Note: the lecture starts 16 minutes into the video.
For your listening pleasure, here are several podcasts of varying lengths:
- A discussion of the history of women in archaeology: Badass Women in Archaeology, Part I
- Women and Power in the Ancient World-- Best Student Podcasts from UCLA, 2018
- It's All Greek to Me: A Lady's Life in Ancient Greece (2 episodes and a lot of links)
I'm cheating a bit with this next resource because it's about women in paleontology rather than archaeology. However, archaeologists face a lot of the same challenges and obstacles and this video includes shots and interviews with some UC Berkeley paleontologists so it's worth a watch: The Bearded Lady Project: Challenging the Face of Science
And for a bit of fun, check out some of animator Nina Paley's work featuring ancient female figurines set to music (though I have to warn you that you may be humming the tunes for days):
Paroles Paroles and You Gotta Believe
Looking for a book on this topic? Check out Laurie Wilkie's The Archaeology of Mothering