It's well known that archaeologists and researchers in general generally have a hard time writing about the past not using the technical vocabulary. It's always easier as everyone knows to express something, especially if it's complicated and not easy to use the technical jargon rather than non-technical words. Very few researchers tend to write about the past using a writing style which is commonly associated with fiction - and in particular not using any technical vocabulary. As a challenge for myself during the pandemic, I decided to work on writing about events that I'd experienced while undertaking fieldwork as an archaeologist and to see if I could get that piece of work published. Voila! I did it!
This short essay, published in The Brussels Review is about how the consumption of peanut butter and jelly bannock, twice daily, became a ritual. I relate a series of events that I experienced while during fieldwork as an undergraduate.
I should point out that undertaking fieldwork in Canada as an archaeologist and a woman was never without it's problems. From all the conversations that I had with my male colleagues, who were both senior to me, and contemporaries in the discipline, it was clear that women need to "prove" that they are as capable in doing something as their male contemporaries. This habit, of women having to "prove" that they are as capable as their male contemporaries meant that women had to use much older field equipment ...as if I use a comment that I was frequently given "...in order "to show that they (the women), had really mastered the previous technologies before they (the women) could use the 'new technologies'". It's annoying...because you were stuck using outdated equipment in full knowledge, that your gender caused this to happen! What could I do? Not much, I just inhaled, and thought to myself, that this was just a case of double standards....and tried not to get too annoyed with the reality of the situation!
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