Moving out of the Margins

For decades, feminist scholars—including Black feminist archaeologists, along with Indigenous scholars and their accomplices—have drawn attention to the sociopolitics underlying archaeological knowledge production and the need for decolonizing work in archaeology (e.g., Atalay Reference Atalay2006; Battle-Baptiste Reference Battle-Baptiste2011; Conkey Reference Conkey2003; Franklin Reference Franklin2001; Gero et al. Reference Gero, Lacy and Blakey1983; Watkins Reference Watkins2003). It has been four decades since Joan Gero (Reference Gero1985) published “Socio-Politics and the Woman-at-Home Ideology,” a seminal article that bridged what Alison Wylie (Reference Wylie1997:81–84) later categorized as two main forms of feminist archaeology: content critiques (scrutinizing narratives produced about the past as a result of standpoint) and equity critiques (analyzing the status of the profession). Zooming in on gender relations and gender ideology, Gero (Reference Gero1985:342) wrote, “The discipline is becoming aware that our notions of the past, our epistemologies, our research emphases, the methods we employ in our research, and the interpretations we bring to and distill from our investigations, are far from value-neutral.”

Feminist scholars engaging with standpoint theory and other critical science and technology scholarship have long questioned the so-called objectivity of science in probing persisting assumptions and epistemological biases, recognizing that science benefits from the inclusion of diverse and marginalized perspectives (e.g., Haraway Reference Haraway1989; Harding Reference Harding1991; Hartsock Reference Hartsock, Harding and Hintikka1983; TallBear Reference TallBear2014; Wylie Reference Wylie1997, Reference Wylie2000, Reference Wylie and Grasswick2011). However, as we write this article in 2025, much more work needs to be done to approach equity in our field. Gendered and racial disparities persist in tenure-track archaeology hiring, senior research grant submissions, conference participation, and publishing in peer-reviewed journals (especially those with high impact factors). In a domain that privileges masculinist gender performance, archaeology faculty remain disproportionately represented by cisgender white men (Kawa Reference Kawa2022), in part resulting from the biased hiring of graduates from “elite” universities (Kawa et al. Reference Kawa, Clavijo Michelangeli, Clark, Ginsberg and McCarty2019). Speakman and colleagues (Reference Speakman, Hadden, Colvin, Justin Cramb, Jones and Lulewicz2018) found that, between 2004 and 2014, men were disproportionately hired into anthropology research-intensive positions compared to PhD graduation rates, especially those with doctoral programs. The scholarship of women, particularly Black women, remains underpublished, underrepresented, and undercited in anthropology, a situation that has remained unchanged for decades (Bardolph Reference Bardolph2014; Blakey Reference Blakey2020; Heath-Stout Reference Heath-Stout2020; Hutson et al. Reference Hutson, Johnson, Price, Record, Rodriguez, Snow and Stocking2023; Ike et al. Reference Ike, Miller and Omoni Hartemann2020). Given the underrepresentation of women in research-intensive positions, it is perhaps unsurprising that the number of submissions by women for senior archaeology grants from the National Science Foundation, Wenner Gren, and National Geographic has been half that of men (Goldstein et al. Reference Goldstein, Mills, Herr, Ellen Burkholder, Aiello and Thornton2018), a trend paralleled by lower submission rates by women to archaeology journals. Although less specific gender and racial/ethnic demographic data are available for CRM, including the private sector, federal agencies, and other sectors of archaeology, senior positions historically have been dominated by white men in North America as well (e.g., Bardolph and VanDerwarker Reference Bardolph and VanDerwarker2016; Gonzalez Reference Gonzalez2018; Rowinski Reference Rowinski2023; Tushingham et al. Reference Tushingham, Fulkerson and Hill2017).

Both formal and informal structural mechanisms have presented women and/or members of underrepresented groups with more obstacles and fewer opportunities in their career paths within archaeology specifically and across academia more broadly. Critical university studies have turned scholars’ gazes toward institutions of higher education, analyzing a range of inequalities and exclusionary practices (e.g., Chatterjee and Maira Reference Chatterjee and Maira2014; Davis Reference Davis, Hyatt, Shear and Wright2015; Gusterson Reference Gusterson2017; Paperson Reference Paperson2017; Singh and Vora Reference Singh and Vora2023; Williams and Tuitt Reference Williams, Tuitt, Williams, Squire and Tuitt2021). Despite recent attempts to increase diversity in academic hiring nationwide, women and faculty of color remain overrepresented in the lowest-ranking and lowest-paying faculty positions, a pattern that has persisted over time (Schneider and Bichsel Reference Schneider and Bichsel2024). Historical exclusions by gatekeeper institutions, including grant agencies, peer-reviewed journals, and R1 universities, have lowered success and retention, often couched within metaphors like “the leaky pipeline” and “the glass ceiling” that obscure how change does (and does not) happen and that absolve individuals and systems from responsibility for the lack of change (Sterling Reference Sterling2021). These issues are particularly acute for multiply marginalized individuals who navigate intersecting biases and identity-based discrimination simultaneously (Cedillo Reference Cedillo, Beech and Guy2021; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. Reference Gutiérrez y Muhs, Flores Niemann, González and Angela2012; Turner Reference Turner2002): they are further compounded by archaeology’s historical lack of attention to racism as a contemporary social issue (Park et al. Reference Park, Wang and Marwick2022).

Also influencing these dynamics is archaeology’s drinking culture (Miller Reference Miller2018), one facet of which Leighton (Reference Leighton2020) refers to as performative informality that reproduces white male privilege and puts those unable to enact or perform informality appropriately (including women, people of color, people from working-class backgrounds, and foreigners) at a distinct disadvantage. According to Leighton (Reference Leighton2020:10), performative informality undergirds the (often unintentional) perpetuation of hierarchies and exclusion in academic disciplines that are otherwise committed to feminist and postcolonial agendas, including archaeology. On the more nefarious side of these dynamics is the disturbing documentation of high rates of gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence in our field. Since Clancy and coauthors (Reference Clancy, Nelson, Rutherford and Hinde2014) published the Survey of Academic Field Experiences , archaeologists have brought attention to widespread sexual misconduct in field settings, as well as classrooms, laboratories, museums, office workplaces, and conferences (Hodgetts et al. Reference Hodgetts, Supernant, Lyons and Welch2020; Meyers et al. Reference Meyers, Horton, Boudreaux, Carmody, Wright and Dekle2018; Radde Reference Radde2018; Voss Reference Voss2021a, Reference Voss2021b): this sexual misconduct “creates a cognitive burden for survivors and reduces access to professional opportunities, directly impacting diversity within archaeology” (Voss Reference Voss2021a:241).

Building on this important and pathbreaking work, we take this necessary conversation in new directions. The experiences and analyses of Latina archaeologists remain understudied for several reasons. From a demographic perspective, archaeology historically has been dominated by white men. According to the most recent Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Member Needs Assessment Survey, 83.5% of respondents identified as “White or Caucasian” (SAA 2020); Black or African American archaeologists are the lowest-represented racial/ethnic group at only 0.5%. Despite reaching relative (binary) gender parity in the makeup of practitioners in recent years (48% identified as men, 48% identified as women, less than 1% identified as nonbinary, and 3% preferred not to state), archaeology remains “stacked toward the privilege of straight white cis men” (Cobb and Crellin Reference Cobb and Crellin2022, citing what Deleuze and Guattari [Reference Deleuze, Guattari and Massumi1987] call the majoritarian) and one in which “elite white men [continue to] control western structures of knowledge validation . . . [and where] their interests pervade themes, paradigms, and epistemologies of traditional scholarships” (Collins Reference Collins2000:251).

Teasing out the representation of Latinx archaeologists is difficult. Reflected in the debates about the use of terms such as “Hispanic” versus “Latino/a or Latinx/Latine” (see footnote 1), there is vast diversity among people who have been traditionally grouped together. The SAA Member Needs Assessment Survey places people from Latin American countries and people in the United States into a singular racial category. The survey did not distinguish race from ethnicity: 5.8% of survey respondents identified as “Latino or Hispanic.” However, this categorical lumping produces a twofold problem. Because this percentage includes archaeologists from Mexico, Central America, and South America, the percentage of Latinx archaeologists living and working in the United States is much smaller than even that 5.8% found in the SAA sample. In addition, the equation of Latinx identity to Hispanic erases differences among a broader assemblage of racial categories; for example, Mexican and Puerto Rican, “a category that is alternately represented as ethnic or racial in official demographic terms” (Rosa Reference Rosa2019:89). Furthermore, there are linguistic exclusions; people of Brazil, by far the largest and most populous country in South America, are not “Hispanic” descended from populations speaking Spanish. Finally, as Omi and Winant (Reference Omi and Winant2015), Rosa (Reference Rosa2019), and others argue, Latinx people in the United States are racialized through cultural indices, including people who otherwise may have been categorized as “white” in their home Latin American countries’ racial landscapes.

It also bears noting that Black archaeologists have recently gained sufficient visibility within the discipline to publicly and professionally advocate for the need for “critical race and Black feminist theories, vindicationist scholarship, and a commitment to partnering with Black communities” (Franklin et al. Reference Franklin, Dunnavant, Omilade Flewellen and Odewale2020:755). The Society for Black Archaeologists (SBA), formed in 2011, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to “center the histories and material culture of global Black and African communities” and to “work to resolve the ongoing systemic exclusion of Black and African scholars and communities from the field of archaeology” (Society of Black Archaeologists 2025): it has created an active space for Black archaeologists. Decades earlier in 1970, the Association of Black Anthropologists was formed with the goal of “breaking down barriers that impeded their full participation in the discipline of Anthropology” (Association of Black Anthropologists 2025). Although there is an Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists, a section of the American Anthropological Association founded in 1990, a similar group for Latino/a/x/e archaeologists does not exist to date.

Feminist archaeology, particularly Black feminist archaeology, offers important interventions to change disciplinary norms, canons, and practices that continue to silence and even violate women. We are indebted to the interventions of Black feminist and Indigenous archaeologists who have created spaces for discussion and analysis and for giving voice to the ways in which women of color have historically and continue to be tokenized, treated as native informants, forced to prove their places at the table, presumed incompetent, or all of the above (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. Reference Gutiérrez y Muhs, Flores Niemann, González and Angela2012) while facing endemic harassment. Flewellen and coauthors (Reference Flewellen, Dunnavant, Odewale, Jones, Wolde-Michael, Crossland and Franklin2021) and Rivera Prince and colleagues (Reference Prince, Jordi, Blackwood, Brough, Landázuri, Leclerc, Barnes and Douglass2022) argue that an intersectional approach to these long-standing patterns of marginalization is required. Intersectionality, a term formalized by Kimberlé Crenshaw (Reference Crenshaw1989, Reference Crenshaw1991) synthesizing more than a century of BIPOC feminist thought and elaborated by Latina feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa (Reference Anzaldúa1987), is a framework used by many scholars and activists to explore how racism, sexism, classism, and other axes of identity overlap and result in varied consequences for accessing privilege or experiencing oppression. As we discuss in detail later, several patterns of intersectional oppressions emerged from conversations with Latinas who are currently in graduate school or employed in academic positions or in CRM in the United States.

The women whom Milsy interviewed were predominantly first-generation college students who faced unique obstacles posed by their families’ citizenship status, including economic challenges that intersect with lower cultural capital, disenfranchisement, and pressure to adapt to culturally specific institutional norms and structures. Family expectations (familismo) can become a double-edged sword—providing support and sanctuary in meeting increasing demands in a meritocratic systemFootnote ³ but also limiting opportunities for travel for graduate school and fieldwork. Despite efforts by feminist archaeologists and archaeologists of color to move away from the masculine ethos in archaeology—embodied by those Gero (Reference Gero1985) called the “cowboys of science”—that privileges excavation above other forms of knowledge generation about the past, field schools and “breaking ground” in excavation remain key gatekeeping rites of passage (Heath-Stout and Hannigan Reference Heath-Stout and Hannigan2020; Sanchez Reference Sanchez2008). Within this context, Latina students face specific forms of racialized gender oppression as cultural brokers through their treatment as unpaid translators and by being exposed to harassment at points of contact between field school participants and local communities—a variant of what Amado Padilla (Reference Padilla1994) called cultural taxation. Furthermore, in a small field with densely overlapping social networks, women often are afraid to speak out about endemic sexual violence, in part because little good seems to come out of reporting abuse to Title IX offices. Given all these economic, cultural, structural, and institutional barriers, mentoring is especially critical for Latina archaeologists.

It is crucial to note that our research offers a sample of the experiences and “racial battle fatigue” (Arnold et al. Reference Arnold, Crawford and Khalifa2016) of those who persevered. This study cannot address experiences of Latinas who left archaeology, whether truly of their own volition to seek other interests or career paths or because of bullying, harassment, intimidation, or a constant stream of microaggressions or other forms of disenfranchisement. All the women who entrusted their stories to Milsy had something in common, as Suceli López-Vélez shared, “If people didn’t help me, I wouldn’t be where I am.”Footnote ⁴ Despite the central necessity of mentoring, however, Latina archaeologists had unmet needs, and non-Latina archaeologists misread and dismissed Latinas’ experiences. In academic institutions where mentoring relationships often begin, mentors are overwhelmingly white and disproportionately male (Kawa et al. Reference Kawa, Clavijo Michelangeli, Clark, Ginsberg and McCarty2019; Schuller and Abreu Reference Schuller and Abreu2023; Speakman et al. Reference Speakman, Hadden, Colvin, Justin Cramb, Jones and Lulewicz2018); the very few Latinas in a position to offer mentoring are burdened with cultural taxation themselves (Padilla Reference Padilla1994), which occurs when “faculty members shoulder any labor—physical, mental, or emotional—due to their membership in a historically marginalized group within their department or university, beyond that which is expected of other faculty members in the same setting” (Hirshfield and Joseph Reference Hirshfield and Joseph2012:214). Given the lack of diversity within the professorate and the often-hidden cultural biases woven into the fabric of neoliberal universities in the United States, the Latina archaeologists Milsy interviewed discussed the need to organize spaces within professional associations such as the SAA. Pointing to the importance of the SBA and other organizations, our interviewees explored specific suggestions for moving forward.

“Unless We’re Getting Married, We Shouldn’t Leave”: Familismo

Many Latinas encounter unique challenges of managing families and family expectations. Familismo (also termed familialismo), or familialism, is a central cultural value in Latinx communities: it refers to “the importance of strong family loyalty, closeness, and getting along with and contributing to the well-being of the nuclear, extended, and kinship networks” (Ayón et al. Reference Ayón, Marsiglia and Bermudez-Parsai2010:744). In traditional Latinx families, familismo is associated with interdependence, cooperation, loyalty, reciprocity, and solidarity; in turn, they imply that, when making decisions, it is important to consult and keep in mind the entire family unit, not just oneself (Galanti Reference Galanti2003). Although unquestionably a source of support and strength, strong ties to families can disadvantage Latina archaeologists in a field where people are expected to travel long distances to remote locations for extended periods of time. The interview data indicated that the choice of colleges and graduate schools was linked to familismo in many cases. As López-Vélez noted, “I went to [local state college] and a big reason for that is because culturally we can’t leave unless we’re getting married, or we shouldn’t leave.” This issue was compounded for students with undocumented family members, as experienced by Noemí Girón. She was accepted into a well-resourced R1 university with a good reputation in archaeology, but her parents are undocumented; as a result of xenophobic racial profiling policies and policing, she had to make do at a less-prestigious, less-resourced university for college. Girón recounted, “Because of my parents’ immigration status, I was also really nervous about going to [border town] because of the chance that they, that something could happen to them if they were ever to go visit me. It always made me kind of upset that they wouldn’t be able to go see like what my school looked like or, even if they did, to go for graduation.” The other woman with undocumented parents also stayed within a two-hour radius for graduate school. Several women shared that non-Latina professors still expected students to conform to the prevailing white, middle-class model of the independent, residential student moving away to college. López-Vélez’s advisor, a white woman, told her of her hostility to familismo: “She said some pretty disparaging things, such as, ‘What do you want to do? Just stay home and have babies or something? Is that what you want? Do you even want to graduate? Do you wanna be here?’ I have never cried so fucking hard in front of somebody else.”

When López-Vélez did have children while in school, she kept conversations with her advisor to a minimum. Devastated by this experience, she shared that she did end up accessing mental health resources on her campus. She was able to endure because of the support of her husband, who is also an archaeologist. López-Vélez’s parents could not help her navigate this situation because they did not attend college, which is another common theme we observed. Indeed, our analysis of the interview data revealed that the tethering of young Latinas to their families was less pronounced among the women whose parents had experience going to college. Being a first-generation college student significantly affects opportunities, which we explore in the next section.

“Not What an Archaeologist Looks Like”: First Gen and Financially Constrained

Being a first-generation, low-income student can profoundly affect education and career trajectories: unique barriers can hinder success that are not experienced by peers from more privileged backgrounds. Given historical patterns of discrimination and institutional racism (Bonilla-Silva Reference Bonilla-Silva2022), Latinas are less likely to go to college, and those students’ parents are far less likely to have gone to college, particularly if they are undocumented, are members of what Turner (Reference Turner2002:74) calls a “no collar” class like farmworkers, or both. Being first generation, or first gen—students with no four-year-college-educated parents/guardians—further disadvantages students in many ways: it does so not only because of geographic constraints influenced by familismo where Latinx students feel obligated to remain closer to and maintain relationships with family (see Covarrubias et al. Reference Covarrubias, Valle, Laiduc and Azmitia2019) but also in highly competitive, meritocratic environments where first-gen students are less likely to speak out. As López-Vélez recalled, “Your white counterparts that are educated, that have family that are educated, they know that they have the right to argue for certain things, whereas I’m always like, ‘Ohh, thank you, thank you for throwing me a piece of bread.’” As feminist scholars have long pointed out, women and other marginalized groups’ not feeling entitled to negotiate for salary and working conditions increases inequality over time (Artz et al. Reference Artz, Goodall and Oswald2018; Babcock and Laschever Reference Babcock and Laschever2003). López-Vélez asserted that this pattern is magnified among first-gen students: “I’m not speaking for you, but for me, we’ve always had this mentality. Like, don’t brag, be humble. But the whole thing with promotions and getting a raise is you have to be like cocky to a certain extent and be like, I deserve this. I deserve that. And I’ve had to learn that, and it’s hard because it’s so embarrassing.”

Poverty also often goes hand in hand with being a first-generation college student. Although family poverty or lack of generational wealth disproportionately endured by Latinx families presents barriers to college education overall, making it as an archaeologist is particularly difficult for low-income students. As Ana Garcia shared, “I didn’t look like how an anthropologist was supposed to look like, being a Latina, and then also my family was poor, and I was working multiple jobs to put myself through school.” Having to work during college was a common thread in the interviews, as Girón expressed: “For the majority of my college career I was working full-time. So, it did feel a little bit alienating when a lot of my peers were, like they were able to go to campus like all day, like they had all day to study.” In addition to losing study time, students who work full-time often are left out of additional opportunities provided by professors, student clubs, and other socializing extramural activities; such experiences dovetail with Leighton’s (Reference Leighton2020) notion of performative informality, where no matter how rigorous a student’s formal scholarship, they often will find themselves struggling to make the kind of informal connections that contribute to opportunities for career advancement.

Field schools also are prohibitively expensive (Heath-Stout and Hannigan Reference Heath-Stout and Hannigan2020), presenting fundamental barriers for first-gen and working-class students. Scholarships, often touted as a one-size-fits-all solution to alleviate the financial costs of college programs like study abroad, are ineffective for mitigating the expense of field schools for low-income students: even if a scholarship covers program fees, many low-income students cannot afford to take off work. Garcia, now a tenure-track professor, recalled, “I didn’t have the free time or luxury to do things like take a field school or get experience because I had to pay my bills.” She was far from alone, as Girón explained:

Having somehow made it through a field school and then get the golden ticket into graduate school and a career in archaeology, struggles for Latinas do not end. Given the enormous power that mostly white and male field school directors wield, Latina students face particular racialized sexual harassment, detailed next.

“I Was Just Trying to Do Work Here, Damn It”: Cultural Taxation and Racialized Harassment

As members of racially marginalized groups, Latinas confront incidents daily that are often dismissed as “microaggressions.” Four of the women in this study reported being called a racialized slang term that is often sexually charged. Vivian Castro’s field school director treated her as a nanny: “He also asked me to watch his toddler because his daughter was there. I said, ‘I’m not a babysitter, I’m not watching your toddler,’ and I walked away.” In response the professor derided her lack of “maternal instincts,” which Castro found especially insulting because she had to pay thousands of dollars to attend the program—as she lamented, “I’m here to learn archaeology!” Other students also extract free labor from Latina peers during field schools. After Milsy shared her own experience in the field of being asked to translate “little stuff” as the only Spanish-speaking student on the project—for example, she was asked to communicate the need to fix plumbing in another student’s dorm—Garcia recounted the same experience: “You’re being asked to literally work in your free time. We’re expected to go help them do their laundry, go with them to the bodegas because they don’t remember how to [order what they want in Spanish] but instead of being able to learn, and experience, and have freedom, students are relegated to this role.” Garcia’s and Milsy’s experiences—and that of countless others—are examples of cultural taxation (Hirshfield and Joseph Reference Hirshfield and Joseph2012:214; Padilla Reference Padilla1994): additional labor is extracted on marginalized groups based on their identities. Exasperated, Castro exclaimed, “I was just trying to do work here, damn it!”

In an even more insidious vein, cultural taxation can lead to more aggressive forms of bullying and harassment. Voss’s (Reference Voss2021a) findings revealed that archaeologists of color are disproportionately harassed (along with LGBTQIA+ archaeologists, nonbinary archaeologists, and archaeologists with disabilities), and some of the interviewees were no exception. For example, Castro described how her field school director (who was twice her age) would put his arm around the small of her back as they were crowded in a car. Archaeology is finally reckoning with persistent sexual harassment in the field, thanks to the bravery of women willing to risk their safety and careers to speak out. But as cultural brokers and in marginalized positions, Latinas face particular forms of racialized sexual harassment. Similar to what Patricia Hill Collins (Reference Collins2000) called “outsider within” (see also Harrison Reference Harrison2008) or Lila Abu-Lughod’s (Reference Abu-Lughod and Richard1991) concept of “halfie,” Latina archaeologists are held to different sets of standards or rules in the field: they are expected to maintain proper gender roles within the country without the passes that foreigners are given because of their cultural difference. Being a “halfie” opens women to other types of passes, as Castro recounted: “Local guys were really especially friendly with me, and I think it’s because a lot of the other students were white and couldn’t understand them. Or maybe I just have a look that they like.”

Although it may be tempting to dismiss these actions as reflections of an essentialist machismo, as many white archaeologists do by using familiar racist tropes, they are reflections of global inequalities that were even reinforced by women supervisors. When Castro went to see her advisor—a woman—about her concerns, the advisor dismissed them: “She said, ‘You should be flattered.’ And I think she meant that in a good way, but I didn’t take it in a good way.” Relationships with local communities are often structured by inequality at archaeological field sites (Leighton Reference Leighton2016; Mickel Reference Mickel2021), with laborers paid a fraction of what specialists in North American universities are paid (and in some cases are sexualized themselves; see Mickel Reference Mickel2023). As Adriana Fernandes noted, foreign archaeologists dismiss the professionalism of local specialists, treating them as manual laborers only. Because they cannot take out their frustrations or talk back to white male field directors, local men take it out on Latina students, whom they identify as less powerful, as Jessi Obrador explained: “I would be like the only one that could speak Spanish as well and so, like, people feel more comfortable talking to me.”

Unfortunately for Sandra Arredondo and many others, incidences of harassment do not stop at field schools. Because of familismo, Arredondo needed to attend college near her family, and given her and her family’s economic situation, she first had to attend community college and then a local public university designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Although she felt at home with fellow students, Arredondo recalled that “the faculty was pretty white predominantly, and specifically the Anthropology Department.” It was recommended that she work with the senior white male archaeologist so she could become a “star student” given his stature in the field. She shared, “But it was toxic, very toxic. Dr. Raymond would always ask me about my sexual relationships.” She also was sexually harassed numerous times in the field by Dr. Raymond’s male students and noticed that her advisor would play favorites; he “wouldn’t take on female graduate students if they weren’t attractive.” One of her colleagues was shut out, because she was considered too old to be sexualized by her advisor and therefore useless. Dr. Raymond’s codirector told Arredondo’s colleague, “CRM is good for you because you were never fit for academic archaeology.”Footnote ⁵ Although the comment was made pejoratively, her colleague ended up happily working for a CRM firm; according to Arredondo, “Last I heard, she was doing real cool things.” For those whose parents are rightly concerned about employability, Girón reported that “CRM is blowing up!” Castro had a similarly positive experience, especially contrasted with academia: “It was the total opposite; everybody in the archaeology CRM firm that I worked for was so amazing and supportive, and I never had anyone harass me.”

A compounding problem is that in cases where supportive colleagues do urge women to speak out, there is no guarantee that action will be taken to resolve the issue. “A lot of people had tried to report it to the university, but the university always protected him,” Arredondo continued. “Three women in our department filed sexual harassment charges, but because they didn’t have any physical evidence, he ended up winning it and then he countersued the university for defamation.” Unfortunately, this case and the university’s protection—at least initially—of tenured white males occur too often, as evidenced by high-profile cases involving anthropologists like John Comaroff, Gary Urton, and David Yesner (Viaene et al. Reference Viaene, Laranjeiro, Nadya Tom, Pritchard and Edwards2023; Vieth Reference Vieth2022; Wade Reference Wade2019). Arredondo took her case to the SAA, including to the organization’s president and Ethics Board, to no avail. Although stories like Arredondo’s unfortunately are familiar to many feminist archaeologists, Latinas face a particular threat in part because they are so easily identifiable. Almost all the women recounted their heightened visibility as the only or one of very few Latinas in their department or university and certainly within archaeology.

Perpetrators and their collaborators wield further power as reviewers for articles and grant applications, writers of job recommendations, or members of search committees. Latinas face yet another specific form of silencing, discipline, and marginalization: in a predominantly white field, Girón said, “This is gonna sound messed up, but I ended up feeling kinda whitewashed.” As Hutchings and La Salle (Reference Hutchings and La Salle2014) argue, the past is political, and marginalized groups are politicized by majority scholars. Arredondo’s advisor Dr. Raymond refused to allow her to publish in Spanish and to be accountable to her collaborators, and he tried to prevent her from doing community engagement, threatening to withhold letters of recommendation. Rather than face this continued abuse, Arredondo left the institution, continuing a successful career elsewhere. Even people who advanced to the professoriate like Garcia faced similar experiences: “I have a very hard time with grant writing because I feel like I’m expected to explain my research and how I think about the world and theory one way that’s based on the history of what’s accepted in the discipline, which has historically been defined by white men and white women. I find that I get resistance to what I write.” These disciplining silences marginalize people and their experiences, keeping them in the shadows. López-Vélez was inspired to become an archaeologist by her father, who faced violence crossing the US border from vigilante groups, ICE agents, and coyotes (an issue that is being studied by archaeologists of the contemporary; e.g., Beck et al. Reference Beck, Ostericher, Sollish and De León2015; de León Reference de León2015). As López-Vélez recounted, “He always gave me the PG13 version. Because he had to. And then just knowing that I’m able to be here because he decided to do that and like there are so many people that need their stories told. That’s why I wanted to talk about structural violence, because it’s often pinned on the people that immigrate.” Yet her advisor told her that she should not be doing this type of work: “If I knew this is what you wanted to study, I would have never accepted you.” However, like the migrants whose stories she tells in her analysis, López-Vélez exhibits resilience in the face of structural violence and is continuing her desired work.

“That’s Gone a Long Way for Me”: Mentoring, Solidarity, and Representation

Especially in the context of an overwhelmingly white discipline in historically white institutions, mentoring is crucial for creating spaces for Latinas to become successful professionals. It is imperative that BIPOC students see themselves in their professors, field supervisors, principal investigators, peers, and the scholarship they are expected to master (Rainey et al. Reference Rainey, Dancy, Mickelson, Stearns and Moller2018) so that they can envision themselves in those positions. Girón stuck with archaeology in the face of adversity because she took Latino and Chicano Studies courses with three Latino professors, even though those classes did not count toward her major. One mentor was “so approachable and relatable because he had a lot of the similar experiences as me, being the first-generation college student, kind of trying to figure it out, like worrying about your parents’ documents and immigration status,” stated Girón. However, as important as providing culturally appropriate mentoring is to students—and therefore future archaeologists—such mentoring adds to cultural taxation (Padilla Reference Padilla1994) borne by the very few BIPOC faculty. As Obrador explained, “Departments are trying to diversify their departments; BIPOC faculty get stuck having to be on all the committees for diversity, inclusion, and equity, and they’re not getting paid for it. Or all of their time is taken up from going to all these committee meetings and like being a part of this and that.”

Given the overwhelming overrepresentation of white archaeologists, most Latina students must seek support outside their institution, but few first-generation students can afford even traveling across the state (let alone out of state or internationally). Several women specifically acknowledged the importance of the Sally Casanova fellowship, which offers resources and cultural capital for underprivileged, underrepresented minority students to create a pipeline to attain their doctorates. Most of the women interviewed who have attended SAA meetings said that the institution does not do enough to support Latina scholars. Underscoring the importance of the SBA, several interviewees proposed creating something similar for Latinx and Latin American archaeologists. Lupe Poderoso enthusiastically endorsed such spaces: “At least in my own life, that’s gone a long way for me. And I think that that has helped a lot in my success in archaeology and in academia, just being surrounded by like-minded people who support each other. I think that’s pretty important.” Garcia, who attended a diversity fellowship conference, called it “the best professional experience I’ve ever had, because it was the one time I got to be me as an academic without having to perform for this expectation or standard of whiteness”; she did not have to worry about how her hair, clothing, jewelry, or any other performative aspects of her appearance did or did not align with expected standards for academics (read, whiteness). Not everyone supported the idea of a society for Latinx/Latin American archaeologists, however. Fernandes, who identified as white in her home country in Latin America, worried about the splintering of identity. Garcia pointed out that the experience of xenophobia as an immigrant and being marginalized as a racialized minority facing US racism are two separate experiences and identifications, although she felt it was important to offer spaces for solidarity, support, and empowerment.

The Society for California Archaeology offers another model, the Coalition for Diversity in California Archaeology (CDCA). Its goal is to “provide a venue for members to seek support and mentorship in the profession, advocate and work towards increasing diversity, visibility, and to discuss and address issues and challenges related to ethnicity and race in archaeological practice in California” (Society for California Archaeology 2024). The coalition has four task forces: Native American Archaeologists, Black American Archaeologists, Hispanic and Latinx American Archaeologists, and Education/Curriculum/Community Engagement. CDCA aims for its members to work together as allies and to create a welcoming space for everyone, providing training, workshops, mentoring, and networking for members. To Castro, CDCA empowers members who feel isolated. López-Vélez, who worked in CRM while finishing her dissertation, said these workshops were essential for confronting institutional racism. However important these spaces are, they have their limits. Marginalized people are looking for more than virtue signaling, as López-Vélez indicated:

Another way to increase diversity in the field can be public outreach in K–12 schools. Getting to talk with students at various grade levels about what archaeology is, what archaeologists study, how archaeology affects different community members, and the opportunities for careers can spark interest and motivate a greater diversity of students to pursue this path. This outreach is particularly important in schools in disadvantaged communities with predominantly BIPOC students to combat prevailing public perceptions that only white people (namely, white men) do archaeology, based on the largely monoracial nature of the field. This racialized and gendered socialization starts at an early age, as Girón recounted: “I actually had a substitute teacher in my third-grade class. And I remember telling him that I wanted to become an archaeologist, and he goes, ‘Oh, honey, girls can’t be archaeologists.’” In contrast, Castro recalled a particularly impactful experience she had doing professional outreach at a school that was majority Latinx: “This was a Title One school, and I think it was majority Hispanic. When I went to the class, one of the boys was like, ‘Ohhh you’re like me! My last name is also the same!’ And I had this moment, because maybe he never thought he would meet an archaeologist that had his name.”

The experience of that child is one example of how a small intervention can have a big impact on what an archaeologist looks like. With that in mind, we conclude our discussion with some recommendations for change. Although these recommendations are by no means exhaustive, we hope they will serve as a starting point and call to action.

Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

The voices and experiences shared in this study highlight the need for further structural changes within archaeology to create a more inclusive, equitable, and just discipline. By centering the lived realities of Latina archaeologists, this work not only contributes to ongoing conversations about diversity and equity but also underscores the importance of intersectionality in understanding and addressing systemic barriers. The challenges shared by the women in their interviews—from familial pressures and economic constraints to cultural taxation and racialized harassment and mentorship needs—highlight the need for specific, intentional interventions that address the unique needs of historically marginalized groups within archaeology. Because most of the women interviewed were graduate students or in academic positions, more research is needed on the struggles and pathways of women employed in different career sectors in archaeology, including government agencies, private-sector CRM, and museums. Yet, all employment sectors must prioritize the recruitment and retention of diverse personnel, while compensating mentors for the additional labor they take on to support students and junior staff of underrepresented backgrounds. Organizations should invest in workshops on grant writing and publishing, navigating tenure and promotion, and other career advancement processes, with a focus on empowering first-generation and underrepresented scholars and professionals. Transparent hiring and funding practices, as well as efforts to dismantle bias in peer review and hiring committees, are key to creating level playing fields as well. Formal mentorship programs, modeled on initiatives like the SBA or the CDCA that provide practical career guidance and emotional and cultural support, should be tailored specifically to meet the needs of Latinx and other historically marginalized archaeologists to foster spaces of belonging and solidarity. That said, the labor to create such programs should not solely rest on marginalized archaeologists.

Field schools, where hands-on training often begins but that can serve as gatekeepers and financial barriers to many students, can be reimagined as programs to recruit, train, and retain archaeologists of color. For example, the UC-HBCU Graduate Pathways Internship in African Diaspora Archaeology summer training program offers paid internships for undergraduate students enrolled at accredited Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to introduce them to archaeological research methods at African Diaspora sites. In the summer of 2024, Milsy completed the National Park Service Latino Heritage Internship Program, an internship with an emphasis on cultural and natural resource stewardship, interpretation, and community outreach to establish “a pipeline for converting talented Latino students into career positions in the NPS” (National Park Service 2025).Footnote ⁶ Funding for similar initiatives for field schools, museums, and other heritage institutions to train Latinx archaeology students, including from HSIs or Minority-Serving Institutions, should be pursued, with options for training at field sites within the continental United States for undocumented students. As archaeologist Bill White points out, most CRM projects do not require Secretary of the Interior–qualified field technicians, so companies should hire and train BIPOC youth and demonstrate archaeology’s viability as a career (SuccinctBill 2020).

There is so much more work to be done to redress historical inequities and work toward stamping out racism, sexism, and other intersectional forms of oppressions in archaeology. The inequities in our field will not improve unless we take concrete steps to address them, which will require redirecting resources and labor, continued critical self-reflection, and committing to changing the way we act, live, and do archaeology. We hope this article inspires a future where what an archaeologist looks like does not constantly reinforce the white masculinized ethos of the rugged fieldworker (Gero’s [Reference Gero1985] Cowboy of Science), but where archaeologists are those with any number of faces including women, first-generation students, and scholars of historically marginalized backgrounds. The women’s stories presented in this article give us hope for a just future, and we hope that it inspires our readers to fight for this future as well.