Pacific Matildas: Finding the Women in the History of Pacific Archaeology

Emilie Dotte-Sarout

doi:10.5334/bha-656

Abstract

In this paper I present the background and rationale for a new research project that aims to rediscover the first women who participated in the development of archaeology in the Pacific, from the 19<sup>th</sup> to the mid-20<sup>th</sup> century. I discuss how this research is inscribed in the history of women in science, responding to Rossiter’s plea to future scholars: to write a history and sociology of science that is more comprehensive by integrating ever more of the hidden women scientists, or ‘Matildas’. I consider how a history of these ‘Pacific Matildas’ can be connected to factors that have been identified as historically keeping women out of science (especially fieldwork-based sciences) as well as keeping them out of historical records about the making of science. After discussing the methodological and conceptual frameworks envisaged for such a project, I present some preliminary results of this research: a short overview of historical figures already identified and a brief examination of one early case-study in the history of the first women engaged in the discipline, that of Adèle de Dombasle in the mid-19th century. I conclude by highlighting what the first clues we can gather about such stories tell us both about the historical place of women in the field and the place of women in the history written about the field.

Highlights

Dotte-SaroutBulletin of the HistoryAs archaeologists, we are trained to be aware that in archaeological deposits ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’
The recent work undertaken on the history of Pacific archaeology has enabled detailed examination of archival and historical sources, recognizing anddiscovering a number of often less prominent individuals
In the first decades of the last century, other important figures appear, such as Victoria Rapahango Tepuku who collaborated essential indigenous expertise during the MétrauxLavachery archaeological mission to Easter Island in 1934; Margarete Schurig who authored as her PhD thesis (1930) what remained the most comprehensive analysis of Pacific pottery for most of the 20th century but whose life was little known until recently (Howes forthcoming); Laura Thompson, evoked earlier as one of the first academically trained Pacific archaeologists and especially active in Marianas’ archaeology from the 1930s, whose essential contributions to the field have been recognized in the past but deserve to be analysed in relation to her career trajectory

Summary

Introduction

Dotte-SaroutBulletin of the HistoryAs archaeologists, we are trained to be aware that in archaeological deposits ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. The first volume of Margaret Rossiter’s Women Scientists in America (1982) demonstrated that many women had been active in American science since the 19th century, and that they developed specific strategies to overcome oppositional reactions and the segregated structuration of the scientific establishment These observations hold true for the rest of the western world, with women scientists finding ways to advance knowledge and practice at least since antiquity (Watts 2007), including in the belatedly appearing disciplines of the social sciences (McDonald 2004; Carroy et al 2005). It must be remembered that in most of the western world, sociocultural gendered norms were articulated with the legal subjugation of women severely restricting their freedom and participation in public society until the 1960s in some countries, including in France (Fraisse and Pérot 1991; Thébaud 1992), with consequences for the way Pacific science has been practiced in the field

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