Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists

Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists
Edited by Getzel M. Cohen and Martha Sharp Joukowsky
University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0-472-11372-0
Non-Fiction, Biography, History, Archaeology
Reviewed by Dr. Tami Brady

The book Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists contains the biographies of twelve female archaeologists who worked and achieved great success in the field of archaeology before, during or after World Wars I and II. Although this book examines only female archaeologists, these women were not just the top female archaeologists of their time. Instead, these people (who just happened to be female) were among the top, pioneering archaeologists (male or female) in their fields and their knowledge, research, excavations, and methods have added significantly to modern archaeology.
This book is multileveled. The contributing author’s describe in various amounts of detail important contributions, excavations, and personal research undertaken by these archaeologists before, during, and after the war years. Since, much of this work is either unpublished or underpublished, such information is a fascinating slice of little known archaeological history.
Furthermore, this book also examines how women of the time felt and dealt with important life changing events and issues such as the tragedies of war, suffrage, marriage, and family. Many of these views and answers are entertaining, somewhat shocking, and extremely enlightening.
Moreover, this book also gives insight into the way archaeologists lived, worked, and died during the early years of this field. In these days, when many complain about the poor wages and working conditions of archaeology or the needless destruction of archaeological sites, it is interesting to note how far the field of archaeology has really come in the last one hundred years.