Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, Associate

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

Harvard University

smwood@fas.harvard.edu

This paper analyzes the diversity in theoretical approaches to gender research in historical archaeology. A variety of feminist approaches are identified as well as androcentric approaches and biases. Some publications demonstrate how unconscious androcentric historical generalizations or archaeological methods undermine attempts at feminist historical archaeology, creating a mixture of feminist and androcentric interpretations. The extent to which publications are androcentric,feminist, or gynocentric will be discussed. The development from second wave to third wave feminist approaches in anthropology and prehistoric archaeology will be compared with feminist approaches in historical archaeology. Many feminist approaches are combined with other transformative theoretical approaches, such as marxist-feminism, post-modern feminism and critical feminism. This paper explores whether it is possible with this theoretical diversity to identify common core concerns that differentiate feminist from androcentric and gynocentric approaches to gender research.