Abstract
ABSTRACTQuantitative analyses of how the past and archaeological professionals are being depicted in, for example, exhibitions and popular books offer valuable—and sometimes confronting—insights about how presentation practices continue to reflect gender stereotypes. It turns out that very often archaeology and the archaeological past are still almost exclusively associated with males and masculine activities. This, of course, distorts the truth about what actually happened in past societies. It also raises the questions of whether or not such biases have an influence on public participation in archaeology and if they may hinder the sector's ambition to foster inclusivity. In this article, we will share some of the preliminary results of an ongoing systematic evaluation of presentation practice in Dutch archaeology and on the public perception of gender stereotypes in the past.
Highlights
Quantitative analyses of how the past and archaeological professionals are being depicted in, for example, exhibitions and popular books offer valuable—and sometimes confronting—insights about how presentation practices continue to reflect gender stereotypes
The NEARCH survey demonstrated that a majority (55%) of all the female respondents in Europe seem to feel a “personal attachment” to the topic
In the Netherlands, these statistics differed, with 41% measured for females and 48% for males, but we had more females (16%) than males (12%) expressing an interest in studying archaeology
Summary
Quantitative analyses of how the past and archaeological professionals are being depicted in, for example, exhibitions and popular books offer valuable—and sometimes confronting—insights about how presentation practices continue to reflect gender stereotypes. We do know that if archaeology is presented at places that people visit for other reasons, like to buy groceries or attend a horticultural show, large numbers of females do engage with archaeological exhibitions (Boom et al 2018; van den Dries et al 2017). It has been observed at several such locations that female viewers outnumbered males. This implies that to further develop inclusivity by breaking down barriers for particular groups, we need to better understand what the push and pull factors are, for whom, and when
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