Att jaga enhörningar. Kvinnor som skrev om arkeologi under 1800-talet

In handbooks on the history of archaeology the common view is that there were very few female archaeologists during the 19th century. Instead the history of archaeology is a history of great men with great ideas. The most prestigious way to contribute to science and archaeology is to write books presenting these ideas. No woman is said to have written any significant text on archaeology well into the 20th century, when women were allowed to study at universities and pursue a professional career as archaeologists. This view is utterly wrong. There were in fact a great number of female authors who wrote advanced texts about archaeology presenting ground-breaking ideas in the 19th century. They masked their texts as travelogues or fiction or wrote about archaeology in genres that we deny significance for the study of the history of archaeology. There may be as many female who wrote about archaeology during the 19th century as men. This calls for a new understanding on how the history of archaeology has been studied as conventions with scant connections to reality.