Telling stories is what archaeologists do. The biography of objects, their trajectory from production through use to deposition, is what we excavate and record, write about and draw. This paper explores the potential of the biographical turn in feminist thought, and how it might interact with the archaeological project of tracing the life courses of people and things. It uses the works of the novelist Elena Ferrante to develop a new theory of archaeological biography, drawing on case studies from Etruscan archaeology and exposing the biases that continue to structure current interpretative narratives in this (and other) arenas of study. I will demonstrate that this form of biographical approach has potential value both for structuring archaeological interpretations of the past, and for navigating and negotiating practitioners’ experiences of archaeology in the present.

Lucy Shipley (Portable Antiquities Scheme)

TAG Deva 2018
Session: Feminist Archaeologies: Intersectionality, Interpretation, Inclusivity

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