Abstract

Equity and the dissemination of knowledge remain major challenges in science. Peer-reviewed journal publications are generally the most cited, yet certain groups dominate in archaeology. Such uniformity of voice profoundly limits not only who conveys the past but also what parts of the material record are narrated and/or go untold. This study examines multiple participation metrics in archaeology and explores the intersections of gender and occupational affiliation in peer-reviewed (high time cost) and non-peer-reviewed (reduced time cost) journals. We find that although women and compliance archaeologists remain poorly represented in regional and national peer-reviewed journals, they are much more active in unrefereed publications. We review feminist and theoretical explanations for inequities in science and argue that (1) the persistent underrepresentation of women and of compliance professionals in archaeological publishing are structurally linked processes and (2) such trends can be best understood in light of the existing structure of American archaeology and the cost-benefit realities of publishing for people in various sectors of the discipline. We suggest that nonrefereed venues offer a pathway to multivocality and help to address epistemic injustices, and we discuss methods for widening the current narrow demographic of men and academics who persist in dominating discourses.

Highlights

  • Equity and the dissemination of knowledge remain major challenges in science

  • They are, better represented in unrefereed venues. We argue that these results may be best understood in light of the existing structure of American archaeology and the cost-benefit realties/dynamics of publishing, where women and compliance archaeologists are overwhelmingly in positions where publishing is a largely unsupported and unrewarded activity and participation in peer-reviewed/high-time-cost publications is challenging

  • Roughly half of archaeologists in North America are women, and 90% are agency and private-sector cultural resource management (CRM) professionals (Sebastian 2009:7), our results indicate that these people are some of the least likely to publish in peerreviewed/high-time-cost journals

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Summary

Introduction

Equity and the dissemination of knowledge remain major challenges in science. Peer-reviewed journal publications are generally the most cited, yet certain groups dominate in archaeology. Issues including sexual harassment (e.g., Clancy et al 2014), the relegation of women to domestic and clerical roles in work environments (e.g., Clarke 1993; Gero 1983, 1985), the valorization of masculinity and heteronormativity in fieldwork settings (e.g., Moser 2007), the underrepresentation of women in grant submissions and awards (e.g., Goldstein et al 2018; Yellen 1983), gender disparities in academic hiring and on editorial boards (e.g., Hutson 1998; Speakman et al 2018; Stark et al 1997), and gender inequities in publishing (e.g., Bardolph 2014, 2018; Bardolph and VanDerwarker 2016; Beaudry and White 1994; Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2004; Tushingham et al 2017; Victor and Beaudry 1992) have all been considered With respect to the latter, the weight of evidence suggests that while the number of women who are publishing in archaeology journals has improved since the 1960s, women continue to publish disproportionately less than men. Few studies acknowledge the stark differences between academic and extra-academic publication strategies in North American archaeology, and there has been little consideration of the representation of genders and occupational affiliations in nonrefereed publishing venues, which are often deemed as less authoritative or inferior due to their lack of peer review

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