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Identity, Oppression, and Diversity in Archaeology with Laura Heath-Stout - Ep 282
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This week, postdoctoral scholar Laura Heath-Stout joins Chris for a conversation about her upcoming book Identity, Oppression, and Diversity in Archaeology. They explore how the lack of diversity in the field of archaeology has influenced our perception of ancient history, and how this can and should change.
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 282.
Introduction to Laura Heath Stout and Her Book
00:00:19
Speaker
On today's show, I interview Laura Heath Stout about her upcoming book, Identity, Oppression, and Diversity in Archaeology. Let's dig a little deeper.
00:00:32
Speaker
All right, welcome to the show, everyone. So joining us today is Laura Heath Stout. Laura Heath Stout is an intersectional feminist archaeologist and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Archaeology Center at Stanford University. Her work focuses on how intersecting systems of oppression shape the demographics and knowledge production practices of archaeologists. Her new book, Identity, Oppression and Diversity in Archaeology, comes out October 31st. Her next big project will be community driven.
00:01:00
Speaker
disability justice oriented study of a 20th century institution for people with intellectual disabilities in Massachusetts. Welcome to the show, Laura. Thank you. I am excited to be talking to you. All right. So why don't you tell us about this new book of yours and then we'll get into some questions.
Impact of Systemic Oppression in Archaeology
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, so the book is called Identity, Oppression, and Diversity in Archaeology, Career Arts. It's coming out from Rutledge at the end of October. And this is a project I've been working on since graduate school. It's growing out of my dissertation. And so I'm excited to have it out in the world much more. And so it's a sort of ethnographic study of archaeologists.
00:01:39
Speaker
looking at how systemic oppression of various intersecting sorts shapes who does who gets into archaeology in the first place, who pursues archaeology careers and what kind of experiences we have ah in our education and careers. And then the idea is to really get at what our demographics and issues with systemic oppression, how that affects the knowledge we produce about the past.
00:02:06
Speaker
Mm hmm.
Challenging Historical Gender Roles in Archaeology
00:02:07
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, we actually have talked about that quite a bit on this show, I would say, because, you know, we listeners to the show know that we talk about news stories and things in the in the field and in current news articles, I should say. And there are quite a few news articles almost in the past year, year and a half, especially where, you know, new research has come to light that shows that, hey, it turns out, you know, women in prehistory didn't just sit around and, and you know, sew and knit. They did hunt.
00:02:36
Speaker
They do other things. Right. Turns out what we thought 60 years ago wasn't actually true. Right. Right. And ah that's something that feminist archaeologists have been saying, at least in print since the 80s. I'm sure they were saying it to their buddies ah before that. But just saying like we shouldn't be projecting these sort of white American heterosexual middle class 1950s gender roles onto the paleolithic or all of the human past. And then assuming
00:03:10
Speaker
then assuming that the men go out and do everything important and the women stay home with the kids, and then using that vision of the past to say, well, this is the natural way gender roles should be in
Addressing Diversity Challenges in Archaeology
00:03:21
Speaker
the present. But you know saying that in a journal doesn't necessarily mean that the story is about the past, that the broader public is is given access to a reflection at insight, right? Right.
00:03:36
Speaker
So, we've probably got, if I had to guess two amongst many, many, many other problems, but two really large problems, and correct me if I'm wrong, you've got a ah field that is dominated by you know a lot of straight white men in in leadership positions and and doing different things. And that's, I mean, largely still true today. and and But then you've got the problem of, okay, they're still, they're still in those positions and they, and they probably, you know, they're not going to, they're not going to go anywhere unless they die or retire. Right. So you've got that happening. And then, so then you've got the other problem of, well, how do you either a,
00:04:14
Speaker
but either wait them out or re-educate them. And I'm talking about myself, too, more than likely. And then also, you know changing that, bringing how do you you know bring diversity into the field, basically. But let's talk about the the first problem, because yeah that that's an existing issue, right? How do you re-educate people into you know thinking about what they're finding and researching differently? That's such a huge issue.
00:04:38
Speaker
It's a huge
The 'Leaky Pipeline' Effect in Academia
00:04:39
Speaker
issue. Yeah. And you have because of the power structures of the field, even if the majority of people in my generation, I'm a millennial, I'm 35 are women or like the majority of the people I went to undergrad and grad school with were women. That doesn't necessarily mean that the people in gatekeeping positions of power are women. And so, and that's actually been true for a while that the majority of archeology students are women, but that hasn't necessarily translated into the upper echelons of you know who is administering grants or who is deciding who gets into PhD programs or who is doing hiring at CRM firms being women. and so yeah People call that the leaky pipeline effect, right that there are like a lot more
00:05:28
Speaker
marginalized people at the beginning of the career path than at the end, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's naturally all going to change but just with time. And there there are issues with the pipeline metaphor. The pipeline metaphor implies that like any given drop of water could leak out of the pipeline and is equally likely to leak out. and And it doesn't really account for people actually mistreating each other in that metaphor, sort of pushing people out. But it's the most common metaphor there. But yeah, I think that there is growing pressure to to change.
Harassment in Archaeology and Cultural Change
00:06:03
Speaker
i I actually, in my interviews with archaeologists, saw there was a lot of discussion about this issue, particularly with regards to sexual harassment, because there was this, a lot of interviewees said like,
00:06:15
Speaker
Oh, yes, I was harassed by this like senior man, the director of my project or the P.I. on my on my project, whatever. And then this sort of hope that it would like, but eventually all those guys will ah will either will like retire or die or get in enough trouble that this stops. But I also heard from some of the young men I interviewed and some of the young queer women I interviewed.
00:06:42
Speaker
about those senior men sort of inviting them to participate in harassment. So I had a couple of lesbian interviewees who went on projects where they had heard through, you know, the Whisper Network that such and such an older man liked to Hit on younger women and so they were like, you know, like hi, I'm a lesbian I'm not available like really proactively like I'm not available And then that same guy would engage them in conversation about like which of their colleagues they thought was most attractive and they were like my god oh no No, no, no, that's not what I said yeah I did not mean I want to like join you as a harasser. I meant like
00:07:22
Speaker
I'm unavailable here. And similarly, I heard from some young men who had sort of been encouraged to to pursue women who weren't really interested by senior men and who were really disturbed by that. And it's hard to get a senior man who has a history of harassment to like talk into a microphone about it. But you so I had to sort of triangulate here.
00:07:47
Speaker
But you can see how these issues would reproduce themselves as some of the more problematic people sort of socialize proteges to become them. And so I think I think we need to cut that off too. And so but luckily there were also like the people I interviewed who told me these stories were horrified by this and said, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not doing that.
00:08:14
Speaker
and we're building a lot of communities with the people they were being encouraged to harass. And yeah, so it's my hope that there is some culture change happening.
Hope for Equitable Research Practices
00:08:25
Speaker
I also think that alongside larger movements that go well beyond archaeology like Me Too and the Black Lives Matter movement, there's been a lot of energy in archaeology to change some of this. So I was involved in a project that was hired by the Winter Grand Foundation, but they had they were working with a number of other major archaeology funders.
00:08:46
Speaker
in order to try to understand the demographic dynamics of who gets archaeology research grants. and they had been This group of staff members from different funding agencies had been meeting with members of the Society of Black Archaeologists and the Indigenous Archaeology Collective in order to sort of rethink their processes. and so There is hope it it's that's really hopeful to me that there are people who have so much power about what over what research gets done and what doesn't who are like, Oh,
00:09:21
Speaker
We need to reflect on what we've been doing. We need to talk to marginalized people. We need to gather data about who's applying for grants, how people are choosing which grants to apply to, what their experiences are and reflect on our processes to try to make them more fair. And I think that that kind of thing will have ripple effects because then when that person of color or women or queer person or disabled person gets that winter grand grand or that whatever prestigious grant, that's going to boost their career, right? It's going to literally give them the money to allow them to do their research, but it's also a prestige thing. And so there's sort of ripple effects of giving a boost to people doing interesting research and bringing different perspectives to the research that will then affect what stories they tell or what questions they ask.
Inclusivity in Archaeological Access
00:10:14
Speaker
Indeed. art you know It's such a such an interesting and hard question to answer though, right? Because what is the what's the right formula? What's the right percentage of people in from different backgrounds and and different you know applying these grants and and making these decisions? like who Who decides what's the you know what the right what the right mix is? You know what I mean? right When when do we say, oh, we've nailed it, that's the right mix.
00:10:40
Speaker
yeah ah Yeah, I've sometimes put numbers of like ah demographic numbers of archaeologists alongside like US Census demographics, but that's not really like is the goal to match the US population, not especially because archaeologists from the US work all over the world. so and then themo democrat like If you want the demographics of the archaeologists to match the demographics of the people they're studying, then you would only have Native American archaeologists studying pre-European contact archaeology, and that is not going to happen anytime soon. I'm not sure that that should be the goal. I don't think it really should be. and
00:11:21
Speaker
even if it were the goal, that would be like a a real stretch goal. yeah And so it's it's very hard to figure out what but how we would know that we've done it. yeah I think for me, I tend to think about our kids of all demographics and college students of all demographics being exposed to archaeology as a possible interest or career path. And then if they get interested, or do they all have an equal opportunity to succeed? And the way it is right now, it's not equal. One of the chapters in my book is about recruitment of archaeologists, and there's a lot of class dynamics there that those of us like me who decided to be archaeologists when we were kids
00:12:07
Speaker
It's very, kind it's not surprising that I have that story and that I'm a middle-class white person and because my parents had time and inclination and education to like read a ton of books to me, including historical fiction and things like that. And then when I got interested in archaeology, my mom is a children's librarian and she found a kids' archaeology magazine. and that's now defunct because media has changed so much, but there there used to be this kids' archaeology magazine called Dig. And then i heard from that about I learned from that about field schools that take high school students. And I had the privilege that I didn't have to work for money in the summer in high school. And beyond that, my parents had the money to pay for me to go on a field school and were willing to spend the money on that.
00:12:55
Speaker
And I think like a lot of families would love to send their kids out of field school when they're 15, but just simply can't afford to. And so you have all of these different ways that people come across archaeology as young people. The other one big one is social studies curricula in schools.
00:13:12
Speaker
But because our schools are so beholden to standardized testing and standardized testing, ah the standardized tests that get used to determine which school districts get what funding and whatever else rarely include social studies. It's all the like reading and math. And so, of course,
00:13:33
Speaker
teachers are under huge pressure to teach the things that are tested and then that leaves less space for language classes, the foreign language classes for social studies and history. And so then children who go to like wealthier school districts or private schools are more likely to get a really great like ancient history curriculum at some point.
00:13:54
Speaker
than students who are going to a school that's like in danger of losing its funding if the math and literacy score is slipped a tiny bit. right And so there's all these things about access. And then it's actually, I was interested to find that the people who discover archeology in college are were actually a much more diverse group, both in terms of race and socioeconomic background, since college is such a like,
00:14:20
Speaker
you know access to college is such a problem. But once you get to college, folks who there were a lot of folks who discovered archaeology in college, and that was a much like more it was a much more diverse group. But then how do we make sure that people can access college? right and so my My hope would be that like any young person is equally likely to like come across archeology as a possible career and is equally likely to succeed. That would sort of be my the bar that I've come to that I feel most comfortable with. Okay. Yeah, that would be a good goal for sure. Okay.
Reevaluating Old Research Biases
00:14:57
Speaker
All right. Well, with that, let's take a break. And on the other side, we'll continue this discussion back in a minute.
00:15:03
Speaker
Welcome back to the archeology show episode 282. And we are talking with Laura Heath Stout and she's got a new book out. Check for the link in the show notes. You can pre-order it right now. If you're listening to this way into the future, just go buy it. But ah take a listen to the last segment. And if you're listening to this in a disconnected fashion, but we are going to continue talking about this. Cause I mentioned in the last segment that, you know, we often do news articles on this show and we talk about how you know things are looked at in a different light and and people reanalyze stuff and sometimes these ideas that that you know were populated 60, 70, 80 years ago, are turns out they're no longer true and turns out they were probably never true, right? And I'm just wondering if this research that was you know put forth by you know often you know stodgy old men in the 60s, 50s, 40s, earlier, even 80s, 90s, who knows when, right? and And they're saying all these theories, these gender-based theories and that are now slowly, if not quickly, being proven false and and things are now coming to light and and new new people are coming to the field with new ideas and not even new ideas, but just ideas that are finally getting heard, right? And and people are finally starting to listen.
00:16:24
Speaker
Is this ah research and these ideas that people have had and and the way that they've treated people in the field and and they're their own biases and things like that, can you see this when you've done research and people who have done gender studies in these fields? is it Is it really just super obvious when you look back and you look back at the field and then you look at the papers and research people have done and when you when you use hindsight to look at all that, is it just incredibly obvious the research people have done or ah Do you understand what I'm trying to say? I don't understand. Yeah. I just trying to articulate this.
Biases in Historical Archaeology
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah. I think that often the bias is really obvious and then, or the assumptions are really obvious. And then sometimes it can be very,
00:17:07
Speaker
difficult to figure out how to prove that something different happened. So this happens on like divisions of labor. Like, you know, you can see in the archaeological record that certain tasks got done, but then looking at figuring out who did which task can be really difficult. And so then, I mean, of course we have like bioarchaeologists are sometimes able to tell from like muscle attachments and wear on people's bones.
00:17:37
Speaker
that, oh, like this person did a lot of like this kind of work. like the I think the like classic example is that blacksmiths have like one really bulky shoulder and one bulky shoulder, things like that. Or even with like disabled individuals in the past, then you can think about like which of the tasks that we know took place at this site would have been doable with this person's body and which ones wouldn't be. And then of course, you have grave goods, but yeah if someone's buried with certain things, does that mean that those were the things that belonged to them or had anything to do with what
00:18:15
Speaker
work they did and then it's argued. So it gets really tricky. And so that is a space where it's very easy to just make assumptions like, well, we know that someone went out and hunted and we know that there were kids that someone had to watch. And so we're just going to assume that the men went out and hunted and the women watched the kids. Yeah. And it's very hard, like, well, we know that someone was butchering these animals and we could do, and because there were like tons of kids, especially like, you know, pre-birth control, people had a lot of kids, even if some of them were dying young. And so like, it can be hard to break down those biases. And so you read some of this old research and you're like, well, why are you assuming that? But then it's very hard to say, oh, look,
00:19:01
Speaker
we have incontrovertible proof that this this person with a really wide pelvis was like out doing the hunting and this person with a really narrow pelvis was like watching kids. like it's It's very difficult. So the bias is really obvious. But one of my favorite examples, I used to ah work in Aztec and colonial period central Mexico, and there's some great work by Lisa Overholzer and Kristen DeLucia.
00:19:26
Speaker
about like childbirth and child rearing in Aztec Mexico at the site of Halta Khan and some of I remember discovering some of those articles and being like, oh yeah, of course there are like tons of kids running around and like, we can think about where, what the kids are doing. And so in her article, Kristen Delucia argues that some of these small fired clay representations of people should be thought of as dolls rather than figurines. And like,
00:20:04
Speaker
Oh, duh, of course. But I and and she doesn't say in the article, like, well, because I'm a mom, I looked at these and was like, that looks like a toy. But she is a mom. She's fought a lot for like childcare at conferences and things like that. And as as a mom myself, spending a lot of time with an almost three year old, like, it makes sense to me that I would look at like an Aztec household through a different lens than someone who doesn't have sort of primary responsibility for children. And that that would shape how you would think about it. And so she also thinks about different activity areas in the house. And like as someone who's thought a bunch about childproofing my house, if I were making obsidian tools in my living room, let me tell you that my two two year and 10 month old would not be allowed in here. And I would be thinking about that. And you can imagine that if you're not really like thinking about
00:20:59
Speaker
kids, either because you don't have kids or because you're, you have a wife who is doing almost, who is like the, really the primary parent. You just wouldn't think about these things. And so you'd see these figurines and say like, Oh, ritual and and just like miss that. Well, we actually have to disprove that they're toys in order to say that they're just like fancy ritual objects. Right. We actually have to think about this. And so, yeah, and then Lisa Overholter has an article about Aztec midwives in which ah she uses both ah the Florentine Codex, a 16th century colonial period document and archaeological evidence to like think about childbirth. And it's not so much that anyone was saying anything sexist or wrong about Aztec childbirth. It's just that no one was writing much about childbirth.
00:21:49
Speaker
at all. And so it's not surprising to me that if you add more women and especially women who have kids to a discipline, to a subfield, a particular area of study, you're going to get these different
Influence of Cultural Assumptions and Biases
00:22:02
Speaker
interpretations. And then, yeah.
00:22:04
Speaker
I read those before I became a mom myself, but now that I'm a mom, I'm like, oh yeah, of course I would be thinking about that because it's just in my brain all the time. Yeah. and You know, just thinking about kids and stuff like that, it's so amazing to me how much And so obvious too, how much bias really influences you as an archaeologist. And because, you know, I've been a serum archaeologist for a long time and there's three things I can think of that really just, really just kind of always sit in my head. And one of them is, you know, when we first worked in, cause my wife is a serum archaeologist too, everybody who listens to this podcast knows that. And
00:22:41
Speaker
When we started working in Nevada for the first time, which was early in both of our careers, we got over there and we were shovel bums. We'd been living out of our car for probably a year at that point, maybe longer by the time we got to Nevada, just going job to job. And when we got there, we started working for a couple of companies and there had been people that had been working at those companies for a long time, or at least in the Great Basin, if not just out of the Reno offices forever, right? And they maybe even went to school there, and they had no concept of shovel bumps. They had no concept of like working you know across the country and doing this, and and just didn't even know that was a thing, and were floored by the fact that there were other ways to do archaeology and to do this thing, and that there were different types of site records than the Nevada IMAX form, and there were different ways is to record archaeological sites. and It was just amazing to me that they even thought that way. and Later on in my life, when I started working with digital site records and working across different countries, I've worked in 18 different states. and I was like trying to think of a national like site form type of a thing and and you know having people tell me there's no such way to do that. i'm like yeah but
00:23:50
Speaker
everybody records sites the same way. You just don't realize you do, right? They're all kind of the same thing. They just have different terms for stuff. and But people don't realize that because of their own biases. And then and then i went to when i was in when I just got out of college, I went to Africa. I went to Olduvai Gorge and worked there on an Earthwatch project because that's the only way I could get there. And I remember seeing Maasai kids, they had spears. They were probably, you know, they didn't get to go with the teenagers and do the fun stuff. They had to watch the sheep and they considered it really boring. But there was like two or three of them that they would put in there. The youngest was maybe four or five years old and they were paired with, you know, the experienced ones were maybe seven or eight. And there was these three, they were just walking around with like a herd of sheep, ah you know, young to older sheep and
00:24:40
Speaker
Just, you know, around the Savannah, I'm sure somebody was probably not too far away that, you know, we couldn't see them, but there was somebody probably not too far away that was within probably earshot or something. Maybe, maybe not. But they were basically on their own in the Savannah, you know, lions and elephants and who knows what about.
00:24:59
Speaker
And they're just off doing their job, you know what I mean? And that's so different than the way it is the way it is here. And I can't imagine what it was like even a few hundred, if not a few thousand years ago. Right. Yeah. it's just It's just amazing. But people who don't have those experiences and see those things and just live in Victorian England or something like that might not even be able to interpret that, you know, let alone live in suburban Reno or something, you know? so Right.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah. And yeah, we tend to underestimate how much of our culture is specific to a very particular time and place. And so you just like you think you know what childhood is or like what does it what does it mean to be a four-year-old? Yeah. and like what it means to be a four-year-old actually varies enormously across time and space and culture. And yeah yep and and in fact, our I think our culture is even changing about like how much freedom kids have. And it of course that varies geographically too, but like how much do you
00:26:09
Speaker
like Like when my mom was a kid, she would go out and play on the street with her friends and her mom didn't necessarily like know exactly where she was all the time and she just had to be home for dinner. And then my mom sort of did that with me as a kid in the 90s.
00:26:26
Speaker
acquaintances would like see me riding my bike around town and call my mom and be like, do you know where Laura is? you know She's over by my house. And my mom was like, yeah, she said she'd be back by dinner. And I feel like she's fine. side She has a watch. She knows how to get around. like She's fine. But like that was a little bit out. ah we were We were out of step with the culture of the suburb where I grew up by doing that. And then but you know now I think that's even more rare for for my kids' generation. And so it's changing. We can see it change over the course of you know the living memories of people in our families. And yet we still think, like oh,
00:27:06
Speaker
this is what a seven year old is. Like, and then you see that Messiah seven year old shepherd, wait what but that, that kid has not only like, not necessarily freedom, but like a huge amount of responsibility that is ah very different from most seven year olds in the U S. Yeah. Huge, huge. So, all right. Well, let's take our final break and we'll come back and wrap up this discussion on the other side back in a minute.
00:27:37
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode 282. And we are wrapping up this discussion with Laura Heastout. So I want to just kind of wrap this up with, you know, with your book and and maybe some conclusions you've come up to. So, I mean, how do we... solve all these problems without overcorrecting. You know what I mean? Because you you did mention, you know, when you were coming up in in say, you know, in college and undergrad and and and beyond, you know, you had a lot of women in your classes. And to be honest, I did too. Now that I'm thinking about it, how do we balance? You know what I mean? We don't want to overcorrect by any means. so I don't even know what that means. I don't know what that would look like. But how do we how do we balance out and and teach people and and and just end up in a good place?
00:28:23
Speaker
Do we even know the answer to that question? I think there's a lot of work to be done. And in fact, the last chapter of my book is like almost all suggestions for different people, yeah just like lots of different things that you can do. And a lot of those are drawn from my interviews. So if I have an interviewee who has a particular like negative experience and they thought about quitting archaeology and then such and such a friend or a mentor like really supported them in certain ways. I think about like what does that support look like and who might be able to offer that support to someone in a similar.
00:29:01
Speaker
in a similar position. Like we don't all, we actually can learn from each other. if We don't all have to like just look at these problems and be overwhelmed. There are actually a lot of people who either through like really like louder activism and organizing or just through, you know, trying to treat their colleagues and students well, um are are making a difference and we can sort of learn from each other.
00:29:26
Speaker
I don't necessarily see that like we're getting anywhere close to overcorrection as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I think that to me, and like if the demographics shift, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's an injustice happening. So to me, the problem would be like an overcorrection in gender, for example, would be if a lot of the people in positions of power, you know, the owners and the leaders of CRM firms and the like directors of the museums and the professors and the grant makers were all women, then my question would be like, well, our are men equally likely to get jobs? Are men equally likely to get grants? Are men equally likely to? Like if the demographics shift, but there's not necessarily an injustice happening, I wouldn't
00:30:18
Speaker
right I wouldn't worry about it that much, but I also just think we're far enough from that point. that not probably'm not that worried Yeah, but I do think that it there's sort of work for everyone to be doing. So the people in positions of power, of course, have responsibility here, but anyone who is a member of a professional organization can join committees in that professional organization, for example. And so there are there inequities like
00:30:51
Speaker
A lot of the people on committees related to diversity and equity or related to like giving scholarships to marginalized students or things like that tend to be from the marginalized communities. And so there's this like labor that isn't really valued a lot of the time that's being put on certain groups. so like Like when I was on the, ah I was on the SAA's meeting safety committee, which was focused on like sexual harassment policy around the conferences. And we were almost all women in the time I was there. And we were almost all young women who were, who did not have permanent employment, actually. And we were like, actually, people who are much more stable than us and have more privilege privilege than us could also be doing this work. And so as we sort of, work I was in the sort of first generation of that committee. And as we,
00:31:38
Speaker
as we thought about who whom to ask to join, and we actually were like, oh, let's think about not let's not just think about the like angry fellow 28-year-old women who are in grad school that we know. like Let's think about the like lovely men with stable jobs that we know who we think like maybe aren't lining up to join this committee because they for whatever reason, and but like actually could be doing doing some good work here.
00:32:06
Speaker
right like the Native American Scholarships Committee doesn't have to be all Native American scholarships, right? sure And so there's this there's this work to be done. There's also things that like even students can do, students can ask the chairs of their departments or their advisors for resources. So if you're like, I went to a graduate program that was just 100% focused on academic career paths, even though academic career paths that actually pay a living wage are like,
00:32:35
Speaker
becoming rarer and rarer all the time. And my best buddy from grad school and I just were like, oh, there should be professional development opportunities that have something to do with any other career path that you could have with a master's or a PhD in archaeology.
00:32:51
Speaker
And so we were in charge of running the weekly lecture series one year and we put together some panels where we got like the city archaeologists of Boston and folks who did CRM and folks who worked for the Park Service who were archaeologists to come and like tell us what they did with their days. People who were not archaeology professors because and nobody like no we were not struck by lightning for suggesting that there might be careers you might want to do that are not a tenure track professor it was a little nerve wracking at the time because it felt like ridiculous taboo but
00:33:28
Speaker
we We felt that we had very little power in the department, but we took the thing that we were given, which was here, run this lunchtime talk series. Well, what do we want to hear about? Let's see who can talk to us about that. So I think that there are there are things that can be done by sort of anyone in archaeology, if you're seeing a problem.
00:33:48
Speaker
in your in your workplace or in your school, you can actually think about that. If you're organizing a panel for a conference or organizing a podcast and you can think about who you're asking to be on the panel. And if, oh, is everyone that I'm inviting on this panel white? Is there anyone who's a person of color who's doing this work who would have something to contribute? Maybe I should invite them. Like there are all these little tiny opportunities in everything we do.
00:34:16
Speaker
that we should just be keeping our eye out for for for small things that we can do to like boost marginalized people and ah and support each other in yeah in our careers.
Supporting Marginalized Communities in Practice
00:34:29
Speaker
And I think that, yeah, it doesn't always look like a big heroic thing to do, but but even those of us who are not like deciding who gets the big grant actually can throw a little effort into into this work, I think. Okay. All right. Awesome. Well, this sounds like definitely worth, ah worth reading for sure. And I think you said in the book, when we were talking about this, that this comes out in hardback and paperback as well. So, uh, makes it affordable because these books can be, can be a little pricey sometimes. So definitely take a, take a look at that, but it'll be available for pre-order at the link, as I mentioned in the show notes. So go ahead and take a look at that. I mean, any final thoughts on this? Cause I'm just thinking.
00:35:12
Speaker
You know, sometimes, sometimes books like this come out or papers like this come out, or you have, you see papers or panels at at conferences and things. And to be honest, the right people aren't in the room. You know what I mean? And, and I don't even know if they're listening to the show, to be honest with you. And I don't know how to get the message to them. And sometimes they just have to kind of exit.
00:35:34
Speaker
you know, exit peacefully and then everybody else just kind of comes up along behind them. but Maybe that's what has to happen, but, but any final thoughts or, or anything like that on, on where you're kind of going from here.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's hard. It's hard to reach like the people who most need it. i I felt when I was interviewing people, I was like, man, I wish I could figure out how to interview some of the like more problematic actors in the field. But like they don't they didn't want to talk to me on on a microphone.
00:36:04
Speaker
And so, yeah, it can be hard to figure out how to reach them. I i tend to focus on reaching people who are sort of in in the in-between, who are maybe not not necessarily like, ooh, here is a panel on ah queer issues in archaeology. I will definitely go to that.
00:36:21
Speaker
but also aren't like actively bullying all the queer people they know. There's like a huge middle ground there of people who are just like busy with what they're busy with and not really doing going far in either direction, who can be invited. and say you like You could say, like oh, you know as a queer person, I have said to like ah just straight friends at conferences who are not plugged into like, Oh, what is the, what is this queer session about? Just like, Oh, look, I'm really excited for this. And I really think that like, everyone has something to learn about how to support their queer colleagues and had people come just like, Oh yeah, I could go to that. Cause you look at these conference programs and they're enormous. Like how do you choose? And so you can insert a little bit of like positive peer pressure there on the people in the middle. I do think there are people like.
00:37:12
Speaker
You know, some of the people who have been fired or forced into retirement for abusing generations of grad students, I don't have much hope for like converting them. But I think that there are people who are just like not super engaged with these issues who ah would be happy to learn a little bit about them if they were invited in. And I tend to focus my effort on those people so that we can grow the percentage of us who are thinking about these issues.
00:37:35
Speaker
until it becomes very unusual to not care, sort of. Nice. Nice. Well said. All right. Well, that's a good point to hand on. Laura, thanks for joining the show. Thanks so much for having me. I hope everybody goes out and buys a copy of your book. I appreciate that. All right. Well, everybody, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
00:37:59
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet dot.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening, and have an awesome day.
00:38:23
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.