Uncovering the dirt on Women’s History Month

With topics ranging from the first women’s organizations on campus to OldWorld archaeological finds, USU joined the rest of the nation in kicking off national Women’s History Month by celebrating just that: History.

Women who dug up history, to be exact, which was the theme of the opening social and lecture presented by history and classics Professor Francis B. Titchener in the Alumni House Tuesday.

“It’s important to celebrate women every day of the year, but this is a good way to kick it off,” said Brenda Cooper, director of the Women and Gender Studies program, which co-sponsored the event with the Women and Gender Research Institute and the Women’s Center.

Cooper, who is also a professor in the journalism and communication department at USU, introduced Titchener as a teacher who is able to inspire her students to dress in togas and act out battles on the Quad, and also to study and relive the lives of those they learn about in class.

Titchener, named Carnegie Professor of the Year in 1995, began by saying she likes history, but she also likes to uncover it, which interested her in a book titled “Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists” by Gretzel M. Cohen and Martha Sharp Joukowsky.

She said since she studied archaeology in some graduate-level classes, she recognized sites and excavations mentioned in the book, but was “humiliated” to learn that women were heavily involved in those findings, yet she had never heard of any of them – only their male colleagues.

“There were plenty of women involved, but there was no written record of women in OldWorld archaeology,” she said, noting that the book’s authors, after researching those involved, were inundated with much more than a book’s worth of information and created an entire Web directory instead.

“It’s a matter of realizing, ‘We do too have a history, it’s just harder to find,’ and that we don’t really know now, but when enough time goes by, no one will ever know,” Titchener said.

She focused on three pioneering archaeologists mentioned in the book: Jane Dieulafoy, Kathleen Kenyon and Gertrude Bell – only one of whom had any member of the audience ever heard of. Titchener then listed six significant traits among the three women and asked the group to combine the traits into pairs that seemed to fit together.

Audience members agreed that “cross-dresser” would fit with “captain of her hockey team” and other likely pairs, but Titchener quickly pointed out that none of those guesses were correct, which shows that stereotypes aren’t all that helpful in this case.

“As I started thinking about the power of the individual, I realized that all of the women were not all, in fact, feminists. We sometimes assume that things people have in common – like gender – are elevating,” she said of the women’s varied interests and lifestyles that led them to archaeology. “They are individuals and made their own contributions to their own fields.”

In the Victorian era, Titchener said women were seen as harmless and not able to compete with men, like Howard Carter with King Tut’s tomb and Heinrich Schliemann with Troy, but if they wanted to be involved, they could be photographers or help with organization and note-taking.

Some were involved in archaeology because women – especially single women – often traveled, but still never seemed to be recognized for their work at the sites, she said. Many women at the forefront of excavations and discoveries were either not listed as lead contributors or simply recognized as being in the background with phrases like, “Mrs. so-and-so happened to be at the site,” Titchener said.

“In my classes in the ’80s, there were women who seemed to always be in the background,” she said of her peers in archaeology classes who seemed to fit the descriptions of how pioneering women in the field were portrayed. “They always seemed, I don’t want to say ‘nondescript,’ but they looked like they could start excavating any minute.”

But far from blending in with the excavating crowd, Titchener said the first women in the field were able to become involved because of their high-class status and financial ability to do so.

“Wealth and status gave these women self confidence. I don’t know if it is possible to research gender without a class analysis,” she said, as professors in the audience voiced their agreement. This key to accurate analysis was especially magnified by the fact that Gertrude Bell, a groundbreaking woman who established the Iraqi National Museum, but was also a founding member of the anti-suffragist movement.

The book’s explanation was “both compelling and disturbing,” Titchener said, which basically said Bell was just identifying with people in her own class and therefore, wanted to keep “ignorant, lower-class” women from being able to vote.

Other unexpected traits, like Jane Dieulafoy’s cross-dressing while being happily married at the same time, were also explained by the circumstances of the time. She helped excavate Xerxes at Susa from 1884-1886 and, in the meantime, “got into trousers and never turned back,” Titchener said, noting her agreement about the choice of pants over a dress any day – especially in the desert.

Since the event marked the beginning of the Women’s History Month activities at USU, Titchener said she had to do some research on how the month of recognition came into existence. She found that in 1987, March was dedicated to women by the U.S. Senate after a grassroots movement through schools and communities.

“After reading the news about the Supreme Court and issues of free speech, representation, entitlement and privacy, I thought of how many of us have made our voices heard … and annoyed others by doing so, but personally, it’s been a long time since I did anything more than just write a check,” she said. “It’s time again to make our voices heard about whatever outlook or opinion. Saddle up and make the power of the individual count again.”

For more information on how USU is celebrating Women’s History Month or how to get involved, call 797-1728.

-lindsaykite@cc.usu.edu