Gender Thinking in the Making: Feminist Epistemology and Gender Archaeology

Abstract

In this paper I suggest that gender archaeology has followed the three main feminist epistemologies as described by Sandra Harding (1986): feminist empiricism, standpoint theory, and feminist postmodernism. I explore the main principles of these orientations and discuss their use in gender archaeology, offering examples from Norwegian, Spanish and North American contexts. My purpose is to trace a genealogy of gender archaeology from the point of view of epistemology that will reveal its feminist character. Even though it has been developed within the processual and post-processual contexts of archaeology, a review of its epistemological principles will show that gender archaeology must be situated within a wider feminist framework.