Event Details

Maureen Meyers is an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Prior to working in academia, she worked as a Principal Investigator for three different CRM firms for 7 years, and she has also worked at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, and the Savannah River Archaeological Research Plant as an archaeologist. In 2013, she initiated the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) Sexual Harassment Survey and formed a committee to assist in creating and implementing the survey and analyzing the data. The survey opened in 2014, and the results published in the SEAC Newsletter and most recently in Advances in Archaeological Practice. As a result of this work, Dr. Meyers has also served on the SAA Sexual Harassment Survey Committee and served as a Peer Reviewer for the National Park Service Sexual Harassment Survey and report on the survey results. She is also the President-Elect of SEAC. Her research focuses on chiefly frontiers, Mississippian societies, craft production, and settlement.

Although there is a long-standing history of harassment in archaeology, recent surveys have quantified the rate of harassment and assault and the effects on women’s careers for the first time. Based on these data, sexual harassment and assault appear to be one important reason women leave the field. Harassment and assault may also contribute to the recently documented decreased publication and grant submission rates by women. This course will provide an overview of the results of the 2014 Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) Sexual Harassment Survey. It discusses the consequences of harassment and assault on the field of archaeology in general. It concludes with a discussion of education programs and proposed grievance procedures to decrease and mitigate sexual harassment and assault within archaeology.

1. Understand the need for sexual harassment and assault surveys in archaeology
2. Learn about the rate of harassment and assault as quantified in the 2014 SEAC survey and understand the long-term effects of this on women’s careers and the discipline as a whole
3. Learn possible procedures to mitigate and decrease the rates of harassment and assault in archaeology