Keywords

Introduction

Most histories of archaeology have been written by men, who mainly discuss their accomplishments. There is no country where women have been considered well by historians of archaeology, and Spain is no exception. Two decades ago, American archaeologists Parezo and Bender (1994, 74) denounced that “women have been conspicuously absent from disciplinary histories due to intellectual discrimination, wishful thinking, and the structure and organization of science and the academy.” Two decades before archaeologists condemned the discrimination experienced by women in archaeology (Gero 1983; McLemore and Reynolds 1979; Vance 1975; Wildesen 1980; Woodall and Perricone 1981; Yellen 1983; Dommasnes and Kleppe 1988), efforts to recover these women were on its way in the United States (Babcock and Parezo 1988; Bender 1991; Cordell 1991; Williams 1981).

In Spain, similar efforts to recover women in the history of archaeology can be traced to the 1990s (Cárdaba et al. 1998, Díaz-Andreu 1998, Díaz-Andreu and Gallego 1994). These efforts were inspired by the literature commenting on the inverse proportion of women and men continuing postgraduate studies (Ruiz Zapatero et al. 1997, 674). Recently, the analysis has extended to approach the position of women in museums (Moreno Conde 2021) and commercial archaeology (Zarzuela Gutiérrez et al. 2019, Zarzuela Gutiérrez and Martín Alonso 2019). Since 2000, a series of publications criticized the image of women in human evolution (Querol and Triviño 2004) and the later prehistoric and historical periods (Baquedano Beltrán and Torija López 2020). How women were portrayed was also discussed in the context of museums (Prados Torreira and López Ruiz 2017), audiovisuals (Cintas et al. 2018), school textbooks (Jardón Giner and Soler Mayor 2020) and archaeological practice in the field, including experimental archaeology (Zarzuela Gutiérrez 2019). Recent studies dedicate their efforts to identifying women in many archaeological fields (Baquedano Beltrán and Torija López 2020; Barrera-Logares 2021; Díaz-Andreu and Portillo 2021).

Since 2020, the “ArqueólogAs” project has reunited a group of 21 archaeologists to recover the biographies of women born in or before 1950, who have played a significant role in developing Spanish archaeology but are rarely mentioned in the histories of the discipline. The project has organized several conferences that can be accessed on the project’s website (www.ub.edu/arqueologas). In June 2022 the ArqueólogAs and its deriving pioneras sub-project (www.ub.edu/arqueologas/pioneras) had already published the histories and biographies of 121 women from a list of 265 names of women born before 1950. Eight women were foreigners and never integrated into the Spanish system. Of the remaining 113, four were born before 1910, the same year women were allowed to attend university, and 58% were born between 1880 and 1930. Several were born after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The years following the end of the Spanish Civil War characterized by the political repression of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, lasted until he died in 1975. Many women entered the profession during the last decade of his dictatorship, mainly in the late 1960s.

This chapter introduces these women and their multiple histories in Spanish archaeology based on this biographical material. The pioneers the project recovered indicate that women were already interested in antiquities in the seventeenth century. The professionalization of archaeology took place in the nineteenth century with the creation of jobs whose primary purpose was to teach, investigate, interpret, manage, or curate past remains of historical value. However, none of these women were professionals themselves. As in the rest of the world, universities remained closed to them; therefore, we cannot expect to find them in posts of responsibility. Only in the 1920s and 1930s did we find the first women professionals. Those that preceded them included collectors, museum visitors, and popularizers. In contrast, at the start of the twentieth century, the first women professionals worked in museums and a few in universities. After the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), an increasing number of women worked professionally in archaeology in the 1940s and 1950s, most of them in museums. The number of women finding university jobs increased gradually, experiencing significant growth since the 1960s. Women also accessed posts in state archaeology and, from the last decade of the twentieth century, in commercial archaeology. Despite progress, Spanish archaeology is far from reaching gender equality, as discussed at the end of this article.

The Early Pioneers (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries)

In the nineteenth century, the study of past remains was mainly in the hands of male antiquarians. However, women had been interested in antiquities since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his celebrated The Discovery of the Past, Alain Schnapp mentions that Queen Amalia of Saxony (1724–1760) may have been behind the organization of the excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum, commonly attributed to her husband, the future King of Spain and Naples, Charles III (Schnapp 1996, 242). In Schnapp’s book, Amalia of Saxony and an earlier woman from twelfth-century China are the only women mentioned out of 820 men (Schnapp 1996, 77–8). The scarcity of women’s names is also found in Gloria Mora’s (1998) account of Early Modern archaeology in Spain, mentioning only five women out of 477 male individuals. Of these four, only Christina Queen of Sweden (1626–1689) and Isabella Farnese (1692–1766) can be considered pioneers in the history of archaeology. Christina Queen of Sweden organized the royal collection of Philip V of Spain (1683–1746). After his death, his wife, Isabella Farnese (1692–1766, r. 1714–1746), curated the collection. She exhibited part of the collection in the Gallery of Statues of the Royal Palace of La Granja, about one hundred kilometers from the capital city of Madrid (Mora 1998, 50).

The search for pioneers has identified one more woman who amassed antiquities: María Isabel de Bustamante y Guevara (1703–1774 or 1775). She was not a member of the monarchy or nobility. However, she came from a prominent family and married a high-ranking civil servant who managed the state taxes related to the tobacco business in Spain. She accumulated a collection of ancient coins, and in the 1750s, she became a member of an important collectors’ network (Vallejo Girvés 2008). In 1757, she was described as “extremely dedicated to these antiques and happy to find them, [who] honored me with great generosity [of all]…I needed to enjoy her beautiful and rich cabinet” (Flórez in Vallejo Girvés 2008, 238). Like most collectors, she obtained her coins through acquisitions and exchanges. In 1751, in a letter sent to a fellow collector, she recognized herself as “the only Spanish woman dedicated to this task” (Vallejo Girvés 2008, 250). She indulged in her passion with some difficulties, including the ban on women accessing the Royal Library, where there was an important reference collection of coins (Vallejo Girvés 2008, 252). However, unlike her male colleagues, her interest in collecting coins declined after the 1750s. Her biographer, Margarita Vallejo (2008, 254), wonders whether new family responsibilities may have been the reason for such disinterest. She even forgot to mention her collection in her will (Vallejo 2008, 253), leaving on her death a collection of more than two thousand coins, many of them silver or gold (Vallejo 2008, 231).

In nineteenth-century Spain, there was only one woman who, for 4 years, was a quasi-professional, for she worked as an unofficial museum curator, but we do not even know her name (Bellido Blanco 2022). Following the resignation of the curator of the Museum of Segovia in 1868, it appears that she stepped in to cover the vacant post. The fact that a woman had covered the post was met with disapproval by the local Provincial Monuments Commission. In a meeting, the commissioners alluded to the poor service given by the provincial museum because a woman managed it. Interestingly, the commission’s members added that this care was “even” provided “on days of public exhibition,” which denotes that they were against the active role of the lady in question. It was a stain on the institution’s reputation that she was in charge, and perhaps this explains why her name is not even mentioned and has been lost (Bellido Blanco 2022).

In an article on coin collecting at that time, Terence Volk stated, “That there were women collectors a hundred years ago is in itself remarkable” (Volk 1997, 179). Admittedly, Volk (1997, 179) highlighted “some are listed as the widow of señor X or Y, but a number appear to have been students in their own right; they include the infanta [Princess] Maria de la Paz de Borbon (1862–1946; Madrid/Munich), the Condesa [Countess] de Villafuertes (Vitoria-Gasteiz) [1822–1899], and, perhaps the most important female collector of the period, Josefina Alvarez Guijarro (Madrid).” In Andalucía, female collectors included Amalia Heredia Livermore, Marquise of Casa-Loring (1830–1902), who, together with her husband, established the Loringiano Museum, whose collections are now in the provincial museum of Málaga (Ramos Frendo 2000). In some cases, women were not the collectors, for they inherited a collection and managed to keep it together, for example, Mariana de Bonanza (1829–1914) (Olcina Lagos 2022), Josefa Ortés de Velasco y Urbina (1822–1899), Josefa Monsó and Pilar Santamaría (Bellido Blanco 2022). Why are these women rarely, or usually never, mentioned in the histories of the discipline? The answer is related to the fact that they never published and therefore did not become a piece in the game of references in publications. Recognizing the preceding authors allows published scholars to keep their memory alive among those who follow them.

We should ask ourselves why women never or rarely published at this time and whether this was because the writing was considered a masculine undertaking. We have few direct references to this, but there is indirect evidence in the form of women writers of fiction who had to use male names to be published. In other countries, this is also well-known, and examples of this are George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) or George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans). In Spain, the two most famous examples are Fernán Caballero (Cecilia Böhl de Faber 1796–1877) and Victor Català (Caterina Albert i Paradís, 1869–1966). The latter is also on the Pioneras webpage (Pioneras 2021–2022) to be found as part of the ArqueólogAs project website, as she became interested in the antiquities from the area of the Greek colony of Emporion and even bought land to undertake excavations in the last years of the nineteenth century and the following decades. She is a controversial figure because she continued to work on her own, even after the passing of the 1911 Act that regulated the excavating practice in Spain (Pioneras 2021–2022).

Women’s interest in archaeological collections may be assessed by the increasing number of them visiting museums displaying antiquities (Fig. 11.1). The nineteenth century was characterized by the establishment of museums in the Western world (Díaz-Andreu 2020, 40–5, 62–3, 69–73). Spain was no exception (Carretero Pérez and Papí Rodes 2017). Recognition of the positive influence that cultured women had on their offspring and domestic life, an idea strongly proposed by some of the men of the Enlightenment, continued in the nineteenth century. This is why many women visited museums and were interested in antiquities.

Fig. 11.1
A monochrome sketch of a casino with a few people around an open book on the side.

Visitors to the “Jeweler” room in the Casino de la Reina, the first seat of the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. Source: La Ilustración Española y Americana, 1872. Author’s copy

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Besides publicly demonstrating an interest in culture and visiting museums, women were also allowed to become professionals in other cultural fields in the nineteenth century, but only those that did not require high public exposure, for example, being a writer. In Spain, Emilia Pardo Bazán earned a living as such. In several of her short stories and novels, she dealt with the prehistoric and classical past, justifying her inclusion in this chapter. She used the latest interpretations of these periods in its contents (Mora 2019; Pioneras 2021–2022). Her high reputation undoubtedly impacted the transmission of archaeological knowledge to the general public.

First Professional Women in Spanish Archaeology (1910–1939)

In 1994 Nancy Parezo and Susan Bender (1994, 74) argued that in the USA:

From a slow beginning women’s employment in the field showed a peak in the 1920s-early 1930s, almost reaching critical mass, and a steady decline through the late 1930s and 1940s to a trough in the 1950s. In the 1960s there were hints of the beginning of a rise that slowly became evident in the 1970s. Critical mass for women in the profession as a whole was reached in the 1980s.

Albeit different, this chronological account shows remarkable similarities with the pace at which women were incorporated into the archaeological profession in Spain. Achieving a university degree was essential to becoming a professional in archaeology. This requirement was granted by law until March 1910, 2 years after its granting by Germany and 13 years after in Austria-Hungary (Montero 2010, 152). Women chose degrees more akin to their interests, for example, in Philosophy and Letters (which included all art degrees), school teaching, and pharmacy, or trained to become a midwife. These were related to the pervading feminine ideal and the realistic potential job market women could aspire to. The number of women in the Philosophy and Letters faculties has steadily increased since 1910. In 1919–20 there were 80 students (23% of the total number of female students), reaching 460 (26%) by 1929–1930 (Montero 2010, Table 3).

Women’s access to university education would not have been adequate had there not been a second Royal Order a few months later. In September 1910, they were allowed to participate in public competitions for positions as civil servants, including posts in universities, museums, and libraries, which had been the exclusive realm of men since their institutionalization in 1867 (Capel Martínez 1986, 501; Moreno Conde 2021, 823–24). The first women to pass the examination for librarians, archivists and archaeologists did so in 1913 but chose to work in the first type of institution, libraries (Flecha García 2019, 27–8). The first women to become museum curators began as librarians but were then asked to move to a museum. In 1928, Pilar Fernández Vega was employed by the National Museum of Archaeology in Madrid, known as the MAN after its initials in Spanish, and Pilar Corrales by the Museum of León in 1929. They were the first professional women to work as museum curators officially. By 1936, when the Civil War began, five other women worked in museums. One of them, Felipa Niño Mas, also joined the MAN in 1930. The other four, Joaquina Eguaras Ibáñez, Teresa Andrés Zamora, Concepción Blanco Mínguez, and Ursicina Martínez Gallego respectively directed the Museums of Granada (1930), León (1931), Cádiz (1931) and León (1931) (Bellido Blanco 2013, Díaz-Andreu 1998, 129; Pioneras 2021–2022). At the time, there was a high level of mobility between libraries, archives, and museums. Short stays as museum directors influenced what these female directors could exert on their development. In contrast, when women decided to settle in an institution, they did have an impact. This was the case of Felipa Niño Mas, Joaquina Eguaras Ibáñez, and Concepción Blanco Minguez, who are (very) occasionally mentioned in the (local) histories of archaeology despite their key role in the museums of Madrid (MAN), Granada and Cádiz respectively.

University employment practically remained closed to women. Few chairs or permanent lectureships were available, but when they did, they all went to men. No woman in a Spanish university obtained a permanent position after a public examination [oposición] for any faculty or university (Flecha García 2010, 260). The first university chair granted to the writer Emilia Pardo Bazan at the University of Madrid in 1916 was not the result of a public examination. The Minister of Education granted her a position in literature studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters based on her prestige. His decision encountered the opposition of university professors, including the well-known philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, and students, who subsequently avoided her courses (Flecha García 2010, 262; 2019, 28).

Interestingly, in a personal letter written to fellow writer Miguel de Unamuno, she displayed what could be described as impostor syndrome: “I have not schemed for this to happen, not even a bit” (“No he intrigado, ni poco, ni mucho”) [Flecha García 2010, 263]. She further explained to Unamuno that the idea of appointing her as a professor had been in the making for several years; and that she was very aware of what a break in tradition her chair meant for Spanish universities. Still, she was the only female professor in the entire Spanish university system and, as mentioned above, one of our “pioneers” for her role as a popularizer of the proposals put forward by the archaeologists at the time.

A few other women were in teaching positions, all in the lowest ranks. Between 1927 and 1932, at the University of Valladolid, María González Sánchez-Gabriel lectured on numismatics, but then she left to become a teacher in secondary education (Flecha García 2010, 265). In 1929, Olimpia Arozena was employed as an assistant professor and lectured on archaeology, numismatics, and epigraphy at the University of Valencia until 1966 (Pioneras 2021–2022). Encarnación Cabré taught a course on ‘The History of Greek and Roman Art’ at the University of Madrid during the academic years 1933–34 and 1935–36 (Baquedano Beltrán 1993, Pioneras 2021–2022).

The disadvantages women faced in accessing university employment can be explained by different factors. On the one hand, women were not trained to do fieldwork. The only exception was Encarnación Cabré, whose father sometimes took the whole family to his undertaking fieldwork, even when the children were very young (Fig. 11.2). There is no evidence that Juan Cabré ever took any other female archaeologists to his excavations. Thus, female students were not even considered for training in summer excavation campaigns and were therefore excluded from the camaraderie these created between students and lecturers. Hugo Obermaier, Professor of the History of Primitive Man at the University of Madrid from 1922, considered women to be ‘a disruptive and undesirable element’ at excavations (Oliveros Rives, pers. comm. 1993).

Fig. 11.2
A greyscale image of a field with a woman in the foreground and a few other people in the background.

Encarnación Cabré next to a tumulus in zone I of the La Osera cemetery (Chamartín, Province of Avila). 1932. Source: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España (IPCE), Fototeca del Patrimonio Histórico. Juan Cabré collection. CABRE-3179

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If one is to believe disciplinary gossip, another factor that may have well-influenced women’s lack of integration into universities and fieldwork was the alleged sexual harassment practiced by professors. It is difficult to confirm these rumors before the Spanish Civil War, as all those who would have experienced it are long dead. The absence of women in professorial posts was also related to the public nature of the job. In museums, women worked behind closed doors, organizing and curating collections and organizing exhibitions, whereas, at universities, professors were at the forefront, teaching students. In the nineteenth century, women were not allowed to work in museums. However, as previously mentioned, society had evolved sufficiently by the early twentieth century to accept that museums were a suitable setting for women’s work. Eight decades later, and with a society that had changed much by then, Joan Gero (1985, 344) argued that working in a museum fitted well within the woman-at-home ideology, which expected women to be “private, protected, passively receptive,” and secluded in museums.

Finding Their Way: Women Archaeologists from the 1940s to the 1960s

The years following the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 were hard for women. Under the 1938 legislation, married women were prohibited from work, except when the husband had very low or no income. Nor were they permitted to occupy important public positions. Women who were affected by this law were Trinidad Taracena del Piñal, and Luz Navarro Mayor stopped working when they married. Spain was not the only country to issue this type of legislation. Australia had similar rules in those years (Colley 2018).

Nevertheless, the number of women entering higher education continued to grow. In 1960–1961 women accounted for 22% of the total number of students at universities, of them, 62% took the Philosophy and Letters degree course (de Madariaga et al. 1965, 13). It was not easy. They had to confront the opposition to accessing higher education in the early post-war years. In 1942, Pilar Primo de Rivera, the leader of the women’s branch of the main faction in the regime, the Falange, and one of the most influential women at that time, addressed her fellow women saying that:

Do not pretend to put yourselves on an equal footing with them, for then, far from achieving what you intend, men will have infinite contempt for you and you will never be able to influence them (in Romano Martín et al. 2018, 81).

In 1948, another influential woman in the same association, the teacher and Falangist writer Carmen Buj, stated that there were too many women university students “languishing and torturing themselves with study for which they have no taste.” The “feminine nature” prevented women from enjoying studying and forced them to perform their natural functions. She said the world could progress without women scientists, doctors, or lawyers, but not “without mothers who are queens of the home” (in Baldó Lacomba 1999, 33). However, among the different degrees, Philosophy and Letters was considered the most feminine (Soler Gallo 2018, 84).

Interestingly, of the total number of female Philosophy and Letters graduates, a small proportion decided to become professional archaeologists. A few women could lecture at universities, but the temporary nature of their posts meant their salaries were very low. This pushed some of them to search for new jobs. In the Pioneras compilation of biographies, there are plenty of examples of women archaeologists who subsequently left academia. Many left after passing the required examinations to become full-time civil servants and received jobs at museums or secondary education. This was the case of Olimpia Arozena, who, in 1966, left the university after three decades of teaching. At least three other women only had a brief spell as university lecturers: María Luisa Herrera, Eloísa García, and Ana María Vicent (Pioneras 2021–2022). Theoretically, nothing stopped them from becoming professors, but this did not happen for any of them; and their experience was shared with that of other women in all the other faculties. In 1952, a woman finally obtained a chair in pedagogy through the established examination procedures. The successful woman was a member of the Teresian religious order of Father Poveda, her religious status being considered safe by the regime. Still, universities closed doors to women who wanted permanent jobs in archaeology, or at least jobs that earned them a decent salary. An exception in this context was Ana María Vicent, who, in addition to being a museum curator, became an assistant professor at the University of Madrid in 1957. In 1959, she left her position when she moved to Córdoba to become the director of the provincial museum. That same year, Matilde Escortell became an assistant professor at the University of Murcia. Several women also lectured at the Schools of Restoration, for example, Lucas Pellicer (1967–1968), Sanz Pastor (1966–1977), Asquerino (1970–1971), and Sanz Nájera (1970–1971).

Women who wanted to become archaeologists had difficulties in accessing fieldwork training. In the 1940s, Isabel de Ceballos Escalera worked in excavations at the Migration-period Visigoth cemetery of Duratón (Molinero Pérez 1949). At the end of the 1940s, summer courses held at Ampurias (Castanyer et al. 2021) offered women the opportunity to visit archaeological sites and eventually learn fieldwork techniques. In Italy, for example, the Istituto di Studi Liguri led by Nino Lamboglia offered such courses for male and female students. Students, both male, and female, also learned field techniques at the excavations organized by Almagro in Italy (Sánchez Salas 2018: chap. 3, Tortosa 2010), by Luzón at Italica and by the German Archaeological Institute at sites such as Toscanos and in Portugal, Zambujal (Olcina Doménech and Soler Díaz 2010: 23–42, 48, 56). In the 1950s, several women, chaperoned by their fathers, participated in archaeological excavations, for example, Luisa Vilaseca, the Sánchez Carrilero sisters, and Trinidad Taracena del Piñal (Pioneras 2021–2022; Fig. 11.3). By the 1960s, women were conducting excavations (Fig. 11.4).

Fig. 11.3
Two monochrome photos of a few people outside a rock structure. The top photo has a boy and a girl. The photo at the bottom has a man, a boy, and a girl.figure 3

M. Luisa Vilaseca at 3a. Mas d’en Llort (1943); 3b: Mas d’en Ramon d’en Bessó; 3c. 1950. To the right is her father, Salvador Vilaseca. Source: Centre de la Imatge Mas Iglèsias de Reus (CIMIR), Fons Museu de Reus, unknown author, with permit to reproduce

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Fig. 11.4
A photograph of Atrian Jordan with a few other people on a field.

Purificación Atrián Jordán at the Roman vila of La Loma del Regadio (Urrea de Gaén, Teruel) in 1950–60. Source: Museo de Teruel, with permission

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Many women left the profession to become homemakers, most likely due to the 1938 legislation, family expectations, low self-esteem, and lack of ambition (Flecha García 2010, 259). Until the 1970s, many married women published using their husbands’ surnames as their second surname preceded by de (of). Matilde Font Sariols was published under the name Matilde Font de Tarradell, and Rosario Lucas Pellicer under Rosario Lucas de Viñas.

Women had great difficulty obtaining good positions at the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC), established in 1939. This institution had branches in Spain’s main cities, where most university professors also worked and channeled their research. The Sección Femenina also commented on women willing to become researchers. Its head, Pilar Primo de Rivera, stated in 1943:

Women never discover anything; they lack, of course, the creative talent, reserved by God for manly intelligences; we can do nothing more than interpret, better or worse, what men give us done (in Romano Martín et al. 2018, 79–80).

In 1940, of the total workforce at the CSIC, only 13.5% were women. Most were cleaners, librarians, or secretaries. Only three women (3%) had fellowships in the humanities, and only one was in history (albeit in modern history). Numbers increased over the following three decades, and between 1956 and 1959, one of them, Ana María Vicent, became secretary of the Institute of Archaeology in Madrid, a post she left when she passed the examinations to secure a permanent job at a museum curator (Fernández Gallego 2022: Pioneras 2021–2022). Museums were the favorite workplace for women who had been trained in Philosophy and Letters and wanted to work with antiquities. It was the easiest way to obtain a permanent job. Due to the low salaries, more women than men passed the state examination to work at museums. In 1944, most women (80%) worked as an assistant (auxiliar), the lower employment level at museums (Escalafón 1944). Women represented 70% of successful museum curators in the 1940s and 56% in the 1950s. In the 1960s, these positions became more attractive to men due to the salary increase, and the number of women passing the examinations fell to 20% (Anuario 1982).

Women were not considered for the position of director of national museums. Pilar Fernández Vega, however, headed the newly created Museum of America in 1941, most likely due to her political connections at the highest level. Many women were directors of provincial museums because they were the only qualified people working there. Not much was known about these women, but their presence is being increasingly recovered at the National Archaeological Museum (Carretero Pérez et al. 2019) and provincial museums (Bellido Blanco 2013; Carretero Pérez and Papí Rodes 2017; López Rodríguez and Ramón 2010; Pioneras 2021–2022). They disappeared from the disciplinary memory due to their lack of public exposure, as they seldom had any contact with the public and never or rarely published. However, there are exceptions in terms of publications, as illustrated by the curator of the Archaeological Museum of Seville (1945–1979, director from 1959), Concepción Fernández-Chicarro y de Dios, and the director of the Museo Cerralbo from 1942, Consuelo Sanz Pastor. No women worked in museums as archaeological restorers at the time (Dávila Buitrón 2019, 85).

What about others who never became professionals? In this category, we can place all those whom we see in photographs. However, nothing is known about them, not even their names. Their stories have now been lost. Many may have opted to become secondary school teachers that, after an examination, meant a permanent job. In addition to them, we find the wives, such as, in this period, María Bernet (Maluquer’s wife), Matilde Font (Tarradell’s), and Mercedes Montañola (Mercè Muntanyola in Catalan, Palol’s wife). Miquel de Palol Muntanyola, mentioned his parents, “…had been united by an unusual intellectual and friendly relationship”. Her mother, he continued “who had a doctorate, opted to support her husband’s scientific career, to the detriment of her own” (Sinca 2014), A similar comment was also made about her by Gurt Esparraguera and Ripoll López (2006, 7).

Raising Their Heads: Women in the Last Three Decades of the Twentieth Century

At the end of the 1960s, the number of students in Spanish universities multiplied. Between 1968 and 1973, new universities were established, raising the total number of them from twelve to thirty (Sevilla Merino 1998, 305). Thirty more universities were set up in the 1990s, twenty state-funded and ten private (Sevilla Merino 1998, 306). Their creation created new jobs for female and male archaeologists (Abad Casal 2021, 43). For the first time, a woman became full professor, Ana María Muñoz Amilibia in 1974, followed by Pilar Acosta in 1981, Pilar Utrilla in 1982, and Concha Blasco in 1985 (Pioneras 2021–2022).

In the early 1990s, the General Archive for Administration reported that a third of those working in archaeology in the 1970s at the university level were women. The proportion remained stable in the following decade. In the early 1990s, it had risen to 40.5%. Women accounted for 44% of permanent lecturers and 31% of professors (Díaz-Andreu 1998, 135–36). In 1989, only 17% of the heads of departments teaching prehistory or archaeology were women (Guía 1990). These figures show that while the situation had improved considerably, much was still to be done.

In a study published in 1998 on the promotion of women at universities (Lafuente et al. 1998), the factors identified as holding back women’s progress remained like those of the previous period: lack of role models, absence of social working abilities, and self-limitation. Despite having excellent academic qualifications, the authors argued that many women felt the profession should not be the center of their life. In 1993, Díaz-Andreu sent a questionnaire to many female archaeologists who denied having suffered discrimination (80%) in, for example, the distribution of research funding or in a journal’s decision to accept or reject an article. The answers seemed to corroborate that in the 1990s, most women accepted as natural the discrimination they were subjected to (Luxán et al. 2018).

Sexual harassment was not reported in this questionnaire. In the 1980s, however, verbal and physical abuse of men towards women was common. Sexual jokes and naughty but discreet touching abounded, all seasoned with stories about the love affairs of several (usually male) professors and lecturers. I decided to speak out about my student years, a few years back. Reflecting on the 1980s, I explained that:

I was the victim of minor situations and witnessed embarrassing scenarios. Perhaps worst of all, I was accused of having been in situations I had never been in, and not by men (at least never explicitly), but by women, and on one occasion in front of a group of students. I must also confess that on one occasion, in the late 1980s, I witnessed a female university professor [she was not an archaeologist] clearly making passes at a doctoral student and, perhaps not to make a fool of the poor guy, I did nothing to stop her (Díaz-Andreu 2009, 159).

In 1993 women accounted for 69% of new appointments at the museum curator level. The most striking case is that of the National Archaeological Museum, where of the 13 curators employed in 1993, 11 (85%) were women. All except one had joined the MAN in the 1980s or early 1990s. Beneath them were 12 assistant curators, all women who had joined the MAN in the 1990s, an institution that some began to call the WOMAN. It should also be noted that between 1991 and 1997, the MAN had its very first female director, María del Carmen Pérez Díe.

In the 1980s, the new territorial organization of Spain into Autonomous Communities led to new opportunities in archaeology in the administrative field. Although men took a higher proportion of jobs, there were also many women, some in the highest positions. They included Milagro Gil Mascarell, who became Director-General of the Extremadura Heritage Office between 1984 and 1986. Moreover, from the late 1970s, women were given positions of responsibility: the head of Provincial Archaeology (Martín 1977, Jiménez Gómez 1983), member of the Higher Council of Museums (Junta Superior de Museos, Mezquiriz, 1979–85), Head of State Museums (Acuña 1984), and Head of Spanish Archaeology (Querol 1985–88).

Women Archaeologists in the Twenty-First Century

In 2020, 41.8% of those lecturing in universities were women (Ministerio de Universidades 2021), although they only represented 23.9% of professors. The merging of departments into larger conglomerates makes it difficult to trace the representation of women archaeologists. There are more male than female professors. To my knowledge, studies of how the economic crisis and the Covid pandemic have affected Spanish universities are nonexistent. However, Spain followed the trend observed in other countries in that women have come off worse in the crisis (Farré et al. 2020). In academia, their “double” working day and the sticky floor mean they publish proportionally less than men (Andersen et al. 2020; Viglione 2020).

Museums continue to be favored by women as workplaces. In 2021, 72.68% of the specialist workforce was made up of women. Eight of the nine departments in the MAN were headed by women in 2021, and ten of the sixteen state museums had women directors. However, the most important institutions, such as El Prado or the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, have never been led by female directors (Moreno Conde 2021, 836–838). Following an agreement signed in 2010 between the Complutense University of Madrid and the General Office of State Museums regarding the study of the exhibits from a gender perspective, there has been a conscious effort to create a more balanced gender discourse, paying attention to language and images (Moreno Conde 2021, 839).

In commercial archaeology, there is a movement toward a greater gender awareness and condemnation of the discrimination endured by women in the sector. In a study undertaken into commercial archaeology in Granada and Madrid based on the excavation permits issued between 2007 and 2016, it became clear that commercial archaeology is a male-biased field in which the crisis has led to more women than men losing their jobs. In Madrid, the number of female archaeologists fell by 55% -from 93% in 2008 to 41% in 2015. In contrast, the number of men went from 110 to 63, only a 42% reduction. This means that women lost out more than men. The decreased status of women in the commercial sector is also evident in the reduced number of contracts they obtained, with men getting the most prestigious jobs (Zarzuela Gutiérrez et al. 2019).

Are women finally enjoying equality in the profession? Publication and conference statistics demonstrate the existing inequalities in the profession. In 2018, an all-male conference was organized, receiving ample criticism (Europa Press 2018; Riaño 2018). Studies investigating the authorship of publications by women indicate that men publish more. When the variable status includes the proportion of women as the first-named author, the result is that fewer women are the first author (Rodríguez-Álvarez and Lozano 2018; Zarzuela Gutiérrez 2019).

The #MeToo movement has had an impact on Spanish archaeology. Until 2000, anything related to sexual harassment was only mentioned in anecdotes. Since oral history is rare in the discipline, nothing was written about it or about the effect gossip had once it died out after one or two generations of practitioners. Talking about it, and especially writing about it, was and is considered in bad taste; when information is given, names are not revealed. In 2009, I optimistically mentioned in a publication that abuse was ending (Díaz-Andreu 2009, 159) without realizing that my experience was that of many women in their forties who are no longer the target of sexual predators. New studies undertaken by younger professionals in the past few years show how wrong I was.

Several efforts have been made in Spain to confront sexual harassment in the workplace (Alemany et al. 2001, 14–6; CCOO 2021, 16–20). The influence of the #MeToo movement in the media has also raised awareness. An official campaign against domestic violence in Spain has been developed in the last few years. Moreover, we can now count on several studies about sexual harassment in Spanish academia (Bernardo Álvarez 2021; Instituto de la Mujer 2006; Navarro-Guzmán et al. 2016). In addition, several movements have addressed sexual harassment in archaeology after the first official denunciations of sexual harassment at excavations (Bedi 2019). Coto-Sarmiento et al. (2020) have reported on different types of sexual harassment: physical, verbal, visual, and virtual.

At the 2018 European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting held in Barcelona (Díaz-Andreu et al. 2018), a few female archaeologists surveyed sexual harassment in Spain. This time they were much more successful in the answers they obtained than I had been 25 years earlier. The results were published two years later (Coto-Sarmiento et al. 2020). Of the 326 respondents from Spain who answered the questionnaire, most had experienced harassment -most being women (51%) between the age of 19 and 30, even 15.1% of male respondents. The sexual harasser was usually male (89.86%), although some were women (9.66%) and others (0.46%).

In most cases, the harasser was someone of higher or equal status. Only 70% of those affected had talked about it with someone else, and in 90% of the cases, the harasser faced no consequences. Fieldwork was the context in which the most sexual harassment occurred, and most of which was verbal. Consequently, 40% of the harassed either changed their routine to avoid the harasser or removed themselves altogether from the situation where the harassment was taking place (in other words, giving up their stay in an excavation, leaving a course, or something similar). Several campaigns have made women aware of discrimination (Bedi 2019, Luxán et al. 2018). Unfortunately, two female archaeologists have been killed by their partners in the last decade (ABC Andalucía 2015; Susanna 2021).

Conclusions

This article has presented an overview of the history of women in Spanish archaeology. It has benefitted from the work undertaken over the last two years by the ArqueólogAs project team. Comparatively to the first written synopsis more than two decades ago (Díaz-Andreu 1998), the work undertaken by the ArqueólogAs project has revealed that the first women who collected antiquities were members of Modern period royal, aristocratic, and well-off families. In the nineteenth century, the project identified more female collectors, including widows, who appreciated their husbands’ efforts to keep their collections together. These women demonstrate that “being cultured” was acceptable in the nineteenth century. In this context, the first women writers appeared, and among them, one has been discussed in this chapter, for some of her writings were based on the contemporary interpretations made by prehistoric archaeologists at the time. However, until the twentieth century, professions dealing with curating state antiquities remained closed to women.

Compared to my 1998 account, it is now possible to offer a richer overview of women’s integration into the discipline in the first third of the twentieth century and beyond. Women’s access to higher education in 1910 meant they could apply for jobs at universities and museums. Before the Spanish Civil War, a few women had obtained positions as museum curators and even as heads of provincial museums. Universities, however, had remained closed to them, except for a few poorly paid temporary positions. This poor integration of women as professionals working in universities was not an exception, as this happened with all professions that required public exposure. Women archaeologists had an extra burden to bear: they had not been trained for field archaeology and therefore were less prepared than their male colleagues for a university post.

After the Civil War, the pro-Fascist regime opposed women from studying in universities. However, the attempt to stop young women from getting degrees failed, for the number of female students grew. They still encountered integration problems at universities. Many who tried to obtain a university position were unsuccessful and moved to other more permanent, better-paid jobs. The first opportunities for women to learn how to excavate and deal with archaeological finds became available through field schools in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Access to the National Research Institute was also difficult back then; therefore, museums remained to be the preferred choice for women. However, as they are rarely published, any trace of their work has faded.

Since the 1970s, a sharp increase in women employed by universities has been noted. Although parity is far from being reached, a questionnaire in the 1990s indicated that women rarely felt discriminated. Museums showed a decline in women employees up to the 1980s, when passed the examinations to become curators. A new job sector emerged with the archaeology services in the newly created autonomous communities, and many of these posts were filled by women. In the last 20 years, the most remarkable change has been the appearance of explicit complaints about sexual harassment in archaeology. Thus, the informative data recovered in the framework of the ArqueólogAs project will be complemented in the future by a wealth of new data currently being retrieved.