Girl Archaeologist is both a very personal memoir and a slice of the history of archaeology in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It is a frank and intimate self-portrait and critique of the academy that adds a very personal perspective to the literature on women in archaeology (e.g., Equity Issues for Women in Archaeology, edited by Margaret C. Nelson, Sarah C. Nelson, and Alison Wylie, American Anthropological Association, 1994; Women in Archaeology, edited by Cheryl Claassen, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994; Grit-Tempered, edited by Nancy Marie White, Lynne P. Sullivan, and Rochelle A. Marrinan, University Press of Florida, 2001; and others). Having been a student of Dena F. Dincauze, having been a faculty member at Harvard University, and having spent some time with Richard and Nathalie Woodbury, some of Alice's “archaeological genealogy” overlaps with my own in terms of institutions and individuals. Although I come from a generation or so after Alice, throughout the book, I gained a greater sense of both how far the field and American society have come, and how much more work there is to be done to foster equity.
The book starts out with an account of Alice's childhood just prior to the Second World War and sets the stage for her foray into archaeology in the mid-twentieth century. Beginning with a serendipitous encounter at a local library with A. L. Kroeber's Anthropology (originally published in 1948), which she describes as the road map to her future, Alice's thirst for knowledge clearly began at an early age. It was her skill in typing that first unlocked doors for her to be able to follow her chosen career path. Although outright sexism and implicit bias against women seeking higher education created significant roadblocks, Alice's tenacity and perseverance landed her at Barnard College as an anthropology major, where she met Dincauze and took classes from Dick and Natalie Woodbury. But it was her work with the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) that truly launched her career in archaeology.
Her skill and hard work in her early career earned her networks with some of the great names in anthropology, including Betty Meggers, Margaret Mead, Junius Bird, and James Ford. She traces her life and adventures through the sites she worked at and traveled to—Modoc Rock Shelter, Illinois; Cahokia, Illinois; Teotihuacan, Mexico—and the friends she made and lost along the way.
We learn of her assistant curatorial position at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Montana, through a process that she describes as having been akin to a “mail order bride,” which resulted in her marriage to Tom Kehoe. Although marriage to an archaeologist gave her greater access to fieldwork, grants, and teaching opportunities—as was the case for many women in academia at that time—it was not without its challenges. They had three children, and virtually all the household and childcare responsibilities fell to her. She and Tom started graduate school together at Harvard in 1957 with a new baby. Over the course of her career, there are many examples of outright sexism, sexual harassment, and assault: we read in Girl Archaeologist about her work being intentionally overlooked and of her physical exclusion from meetings because she brought her child along. One quote really captures for me the essence of Alice's no-holds-barred approach to the field and to the academy: “I became primed to be critical of anything and everything ‘authoritative’ I would read about Indian people, in recent times or through archaeological research” (p. 68).
In this book, though, we hear not only of injustice and sexism. It is also a story of perseverance and resilience, adventures in the field, lifelong friendships with tribal members, camp dynamics and logistics, and the excitement of archaeological discoveries in the field and lab. Her love of archaeology, anthropology, Native American individuals and societies, and the great outdoors really comes through in this gripping adventure tale.
Alice is an icon and an iconoclast in American archaeology; like her, the book is honest and unabashed. She has not only contributed to knowledge about past and contemporary societies but also strengthened the profession with her candor, passion, and persistence. She has been active and a leader in the recent #MeToo movement in archaeology (see “#MeToo in Archaeology,” by the Collective Change, SAA Archaeological Record 19[4]:12–15, 2019; see also https://womeninarchaeology.com/category/metoo/). Girl Archaeologist is a must-read book for those interested in the history of American archaeology and particularly issues of inclusion and equity. Although the book speaks specifically to the experience of a self-described white, middle-class, Jewish, cisgendered woman in a profession that is still quite heteronormative, it holds lessons for the kind of intersectionality and commitment to social justice to which American archaeology needs to commit itself in the twenty-first century.
