By: Chelsi Slotten and Emily Long

‘Hello’ from the Women in Archaeology Podcast! You may be asking yourself, ‘what is the Women in Archaeology (WIA) podcast?’ In a nutshell, the WIA is a podcast created for women by women in the field of archaeology. The podcast is comprised of four expert hosts in various fields of archaeology, Chelsi Slotten (bioarchaeology), Emily Long (legislation), Kirsten Lopez (textiles), and Serra Zander (CRM), and we try to include new voices every episode through special guests. We discuss a variety of topics ranging from the mundane everyday expectations of cultural resource management (CRM) fieldwork to serious discourses on sexual harassment and assault, and well as everything in between. Episodes have covered topics such as the difficulties of menstruating in the field, our favorite barrier-breaking historical female archaeologists, proposed limits on CRM legislation and the potential negative consequences on the compliance process, the effects of tourism on popular archaeological sites, and so on.

Regardless of the topic being discussed, our primary goal is to lift up women’s voices and experiences while also proving insight into complex archaeological issues in an understandable and accessible way. There are few archaeology-based podcasts featuring predominantly female voices, which largely underrepresents how many women are in the field. Consequently, we hope to both galvanize the field into better representation, as well as normalize female voices in archaeology. We try to represent as diverse and intersectional a population as possible and constantly strive to bring greater diversity to the podcast, whether through interviews or seeing how many people we can get involved in our endeavor in bringing the world of archaeology to the public. We are not a specifically queer archaeology focused podcast; however, many of the issues we discuss intersect with queer theory and accessibility issues faced by the LGBTQ archaeology community. We are constantly looking for more people to join our discussions, as well as to provide future topics of discussion. If you are interested in joining us for an episode (or several), please email us at womeninarchaeology@gmail.com. The hosts enjoy a good rant, but I would like to think that we bring a joy to what we do as archaeologists and that joy is conveyed to the public.

For more information:
Twitter: @WomenArchys
Blog: https://womeninarchaeology.wordpress.com/