Sociopolitics in Southeastern Archaeology: The Role of Gender in Scholarly Authorship

Abstract

We explore the relationship between gender, authorship, and editorship in conference presentations and publications as a lens to examine current disciplinary sociopolitics and the relative contributions of men and women to southeastern archaeological research. We also report on the results of a survey on publishing trends in southeastern archaeology that we circulated to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) membership in March 2014. The evaluation of publishing trends serves as a means to investigate academic merit and visibility, along with the production and validation of knowledge in southeastern archaeology. We document a strong gender imbalance in publication rates across a range of publication venues, including regional journals, state archaeology journals, and edited volumes, despite growing numbers of women presenting research at SEAC meetings. We discuss possible reasons for these gender disparities based on survey response data from members of the SEAC community. Despite a current culture and context of women's advancement in southeastern archaeology, many challenges and obstacles remain.