Margaret Conkey facts for kids

Margaret W. Conkey, born in 1943, is an American archaeologist and professor. She is an expert on the Magdalenian period, which was a time during the late Ice Age in the French Pyrénées. Her work often looks at cave art from this period.

Professor Conkey is known for being one of the first archaeologists to study how gender and feminist ideas can help us understand ancient societies. She uses feminist theory to look at old images and objects from the Paleolithic Era, also called the late Ice Age, in new ways.

She is now a Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2002, Discover magazine named her one of the "50 Most Important Women in Science." Margaret Conkey has continued to champion feminist ideas in archaeology. She has organized big conferences and edited many books and articles on this topic. She also believes it's important to recognize the women who have contributed to archaeology throughout history.

Her Journey into Archaeology

Margaret Conkey was the oldest of five children. She finished college in 1965, studying ancient history and art history. Soon after, she got a chance to work in Jordan on a project about biblical archaeology.

When she applied to graduate school, she was told she needed more anthropology classes. So, she worked at the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. She started as a librarian and later helped with grant applications. She then went to the Oriental Institute for her studies. While there, she also worked part-time for Current Anthropology magazine.

Becoming a Professor

Margaret Conkey earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1978. She taught at San Jose State University for six years. In 1977, she joined the anthropology team at SUNY-Binghamton. There, she also helped lead the Women's Studies program.

In 1987, she became a professor at Berkeley. Besides her fieldwork, she has also studied how to teach archaeology better. She helped create online tools for teaching archaeology and started a program to teach archaeology in local schools. In 1997, she was given a special teaching position called the Class of 1960 Professor of Anthropology.

Exploring Ancient Art and Life

Professor Conkey has always been interested in understanding Paleolithic art. This includes rock art and how people have studied it over time. She likes to bring together different ways of looking at research in the field.

Gender in Paleolithic Art

Margaret Conkey encourages archaeologists to think differently about what Paleolithic images might mean. She suggests that cave paintings were not just art. They were also a key part of how these ancient communities lived and stayed strong. She believes women were involved in more parts of early life than people used to think.

She challenges the old idea that cave art was mostly done by men. Many used to think it was a type of sympathetic magic to help with hunting. But Conkey says, "We can't explain 25,000 years of material by saying it was all related to hunting." She points out that the animals painted on cave walls are often different from the animal bones found in nearby food pits. This suggests the paintings had deeper cultural or social meanings beyond just food.

She has also researched ancient "goddess" figurines, especially from Europe. She works with her Berkeley colleague Ruth Tringham to understand how these figurines are seen in today's popular culture.

Research in the French Pyrénées

Since 1993, Professor Conkey has led a research project called "Between the Caves" in the French Pyrénées. This project focuses on the Paleolithic era. It aims to understand the rich art and tools found in the region's caves in a wider context.

For a long time, archaeologists mostly studied caves because they preserve artifacts well and are easy to find. This led to a picture of Paleolithic life where people seemed to only live in caves. Even though archaeologists knew people got food from outside and didn't live in caves all year, they didn't think looking outside the caves would be useful.

However, in the early 1970s, American archaeologists started looking for artifacts in open-air landscapes. This method hadn't been used in Europe. So, Conkey suggested a new project: searching for Paleolithic stone tools outside the caves. Many people thought she wouldn't find anything.

She explains: "They said, 'You won’t find anything.' I said, 'Why won’t I find anything?' They said, 'Nobody’s really found anything or reported anything.' I said, 'Has anybody looked systematically?' They said, 'Well, no.' They thought I was nuts.”

Yet, there is evidence that Paleolithic people spent less time in caves than we once thought. For example, by looking at animal teeth, archaeologists can tell what season the animals were killed. Also, some animals are only available at certain times of the year. It's clear that people were in caves for only a few months a year at most, usually in autumn or winter.

So, Conkey and her teams did what had been ignored for a century. They looked at the lives Paleolithic people lived between the cave sites in France. Before 1993, no one had ever done a survey like this.

She hopes this work will help us better understand the social geography and landscapes of Paleolithic art. Her team searches the landscape for signs of the daily lives of the cave painters. Since 2006, her international team has excavated the region's first open-air site. They have found over 3,000 identifiable stone tools, some from the Paleolithic era. These finds are spread across a large area. This research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and other organizations.

Promoting Fairness in Archaeology

Margaret Conkey has always challenged the idea that fieldwork is only for men. She encourages archaeologists to think about how gender affects human experiences, both in the past and today. For example, when she was in Jordan, she couldn't do any digging because she was a young woman and the workers were older men. Conkey also wants more attention given to important women directors in archaeology, like Cynthia Irwin-Williams and Patty Jo Watson.

Awards and Recognition

Professor Conkey became the President of the Society for American Archaeology in 2009.

In 2009, she received an award from Berkeley for her work in promoting diversity and equal opportunity. She also won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1996 and the Award for Educational Initiatives in 2001. She used funds to create a Multi-Media Teaching Laboratory for the Anthropology Department.

In 2017, she was given the Huxley Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Filmography

See also

In Spanish: Margaret Conkey para niños

• Feminist archaeology
• Gender archaeology