In the past five years, the history of women in Spanish archaeology has been explored through two projects: ArqueólogAs (2020-2024) and Herstory (2024-2028). The Herstory project aims to provide a global, comparative, and diachronic perspective on women’s roles and contributions in Spanish archaeology. A key method has been collecting biographical information on women working in Spanish archaeology and Spanish women abroad from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Building on the extensive biographies available at https://arqueologas.es/pioneras, this paper examines the diversity of women’s roles within the discipline. It begins with an overview of women’s integration into professional archaeology across universities, museums, archaeological administration, and contract archaeology. The primary objective is to uncover the ‘hidden hands’-women whose contributions have been neglected in archaeological histories. These women served as assistants, illustrators, librarians, coordinators, and in numerous other roles deemed minor, leading to their erasure from disciplinary memory. The paper concludes by advocating for archaeology to be recognized as a collective practice that includes a more diverse range of actors, particularly women. Acknowledging their role in creating archaeological knowledge is an essential and overdue task. This work is part of the Herstory project (ref. PID2023-149477NB-100)

For more information see:

https://www.saa.org/annual-meeting

https://arqueologas.es/saa-2025-sesion-arqueologas