Thank you for this, a number of us had wondered about that statement!

But I appreciate your raising it. It seems to me that feminist theory is, 
by now, really an important part of all forms of social scientific 
endeavor. It is one of a number of theoretical orientations that 
investigate social aspects of past communities and it's hard to imagine 
how we could do meaningful archaeology without considering gender, class, 
ethnicity etc. I am not suggesting that military sites archaeology is 
unimportant but it has a different orientation in that it focuses on a 
type of site rather than a broad cross-cutting issue.

I am in no way criticizing the organization of the meetings which I think 
were excellent, although of course imperfect as is inevitable.

Nan Rothschild

On Thu, 18 Jan 2007, Bob Chidester wrote:

> Someone expressed the sentiment a few days ago that feminist theory
> is “less relevant” to historical archaeology than military sites
> archaeology.  I expected a flurry of comments on this, but since no one
> else has mentioned it, I figured I’d go ahead and be the first to ask:
>
> Since when is feminist theory less relevant to historical archaeology than
> military sites?  And how does one define relevance anyway?
>
> It strikes me that feminist theory is actually more relevant to most
> archaeologists.  After all, gender is a social phenomenon that existed at
> all of the sites that we study (including military sites, even when they
> were occupied by single-sex populations), so all historical archaeologists
> should be (at least minimally) concerned with gender analysis.  On the
> other hand, knowledge of military sites archaeology is primarily relevant
> to those of us who deal with military sites—which is not all of us.
> Basically, I'm just saying that relevance is in the eye of the beholder.
>
> But the proportional relevance of these two topics to historical
> archaeology is really beside the point.  Singling out the one session on
> feminist theory is a bit unfair (and seems, I might add, to have been
> intentionally provocative, since it was explicitly contrasted to the
> more “masculine” topic of military sites archaeology), since the problem
> is not that the feminist theory session was not scheduled for Sunday; the
> problem is that most of the military sites sessions were scheduled for
> Sunday.  It doesn’t make much sense that all of the sessions devoted to a
> particular topic would be scheduled at the same time, since it stands to
> reason that people interested in that topic would want to see all of those
> sessions (and would consider other sessions “less relevant” to their own
> scholarly interests).  So really, we should be complaining that the
> multiple military sites archaeology sessions were all scheduled for the
> same day/time block, instead of being spread out across the schedule.
>
> I don’t want this post to be taken as a criticism of the planning
> committee, so I should note that this problem is not peculiar to the
> SHAs.  I’ve been to other conferences where, for instance, all of the
> public/community archaeology sessions were scheduled at the same time.  I
> don’t know why exactly this happens or what the solution is, since I’ve
> never been involved in planning the schedule for a large conference and
> therefore don’t know how the process actually works.  But it seems to me
> that this kind of problem could be avoided in the future.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bob
>
> -------------------
> Robert C. Chidester
> Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History
> University of Michigan
> [log in to unmask]
>

Nan A. Rothschild
[log in to unmask]

Director of Museum Studies
Dept. of Anthropology
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
212 854-4977

Research Professor
Dept. of Anthropology
Barnard College
New York, NY 10027
212 854-4315