At 06:31 PM 5/21/00 +0200, Paul Barford wrote:
>I cannot see any particular traces of the "influence" of Rusanova herself
in her >book The Early Slavs, still less Vażarova, except they and their
works are cited >as a source of information.
Well, there is actually a lot of influence from both Rusanova and
Vuzharova, which goes beyond mere citation. For example, the idea that the
"early Slavic culture" originated in the Przeworsk environment (with some
Chernyakhov influence to appease Artamonov & Co.), an idea championed by
Rusanova (as well as Sedov). Similarly, Gimbutas advocated an early date
(late sixth-early seventh century) for assemblages excavated by Vuzharova
at Garvan, Popina, and Dzhedzhovi Lozia (a date now corrected by Rumiana
Koleva). By the way, the title of Gimbutas' book is _The Slavs_ (New
York/Washington: Praeger, 1971), not _The Early Slavs_. The latter is the
title of Dolukhanov's recent book on the same topic (and following the same
flawed methodology).
>I do know however that when she presented it at that meeting of the staff
of >Warsaw University, most of the senior academics (male and female) - out
of touch >with what is happening in the archaeologies of other countries -
scoffed at it as >"not being a terribly serious research topic", and she
may have dropped it on >this account (just guessing there).
Why am I not surprised at this reaction? I still think Poland and Eastern
Europe in general is one of the best areas in the world for this kind of
research. Though I doubt they ever heard about each other, there is an
intriguing similarity between the lives of Anna Osler Shepard and Suzana
Dolinescu-Ferche, who became famous in Romania for running both excavation
and post-excavation processing of data as a "one (wo)man show," covering
almost everything by herself alone in an admirable way. And speaking of
female archaeologists in Poland, I know of a recent essay by Liliana Janik
and Hanna Zawadzka on gender politics in Polish archaeology. The essay was
published, together with other interesting contributions on women in
European archaeology, in a recent volume edited by Margarita Diaz-Andreu
and Marie Louise Stig Sorensen, _Excavating Women. A History of Women in
European Archaeology_ (London/New York: Routledge, 1998). Poland, however,
is the only East-European case covered in this collection. Nevertheless, a
good point to start building comparisons with women archaeologists in
America, a topic much better covered by recent publications. See, for
example, Nancy Marie White, Lynne P. Sullivan, and Rochelle A. Marrinan
(eds.), _Grit Tempered: Early Women Archaeologists in the Southeastern
United States_ (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1999)[with an
excellent essay by Carol Mason on being a female archaeologist at Florida
State U in the 1950s].
Florin
_____________________________________________________________
Florin Curta
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
University of Florida
4411 Turlington Hall
P.O. Box 117320
Gainesville, FL 32611-7320
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/fcurta
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