Marga Sánchez Romero is an archaeologist specialized in Prehistory, as well as being vice-rector of University Extension, Heritage and Institutional Relations at the University of Granada, where she is professor of Prehistory in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology.
Her research focuses on highlighting the crucial role of women and childhood in ancient prehistoric societies. Together with other colleagues she founded the Pastwomen project, aimed at making research in archaeology and history related to women's material culture more visible.
She has carried out research at the universities of Bergen (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Cambridge (UK), Hull (UK), Havana (Cuba), Comahue and Lujan (Argentina), Los Lagos (Chile) and the Autonomous University of Puebla (Mexico). In addition, she has taught in different degrees, master's degrees, postgraduate courses, conferences, congresses and national and international seminars.
She has been director of Cultural Assets of the Andalusian Regional Government; member of the Technical Commission of the Archaeological Ensemble of the Dolmens of Antequera; scientific advisor in the dossier for the inscription of the Dolmens of Antequera on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and advisor in the development of the Strategic Plan 2017-2020 of the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage.
She is also a regular contributor to the programme ‘El condensador de fluzo’ on RTVE's La 2. She has been awarded the Carmen de Burgos Prize for feminist dissemination by the University of Malaga, and the Granada Prize, City of Science and Innovation, in the category of Women in Science.
She recently visited our island to
present her book Prehistorias de mujeres at the Museu de Menorca.
Let's start by getting to know a little about your background. What made you devote yourself to the study of prehistory?
It's funny, because I wasn't thinking of studying archaeology or prehistory. I took a degree in Geography and History because I wanted to study Art History, but when I discovered that we could learn about past populations only through material remains such as bodies, objects or constructions, that fascinated me.
In prehistory we don't have texts, so everything depends on our ability to obtain the best possible information from the excavations we do, and to come up with increasingly sophisticated methodologies of analysis that allow us to get that particular approach to the people of the past.
How did your interest in the study of the role of women in prehistoric societies arise?
Well, when I discovered that we had not been included in what we teach about societies of the past (of any past). I am interested in how people in prehistory have been able to understand and relate to the world through technology, knowledge, work and care. And if women and their experiences are not included in that equation, then we are not doing something right.
And why has archaeology neglected women for so long?
When archaeology appeared as a scientific discipline in the second half of the 19th century, those who dedicated themselves to it were the men of the intellectual and economic elite who were concerned with questions such as the role of violence and war in the attainment and maintenance of power, which technologies advanced the world, or how inequality and social hierarchies were constructed.
Women are not in these narratives that are built on the distant past because at that time we can't even vote, we have no social, political or economic relevance to these men, we don't do anything that they consider important. So why should women be included in history? Until very recently, we have hardly appeared in museums, in school texts, in scientific texts, in popular science texts.
When did the feminist perspective enter archaeology?
At the end of the 1970s, the first archaeologists to talk about gender and feminist archaeology were Scandinavian, and shortly afterwards Anglo-Saxon archaeologists. The article that initiates the concern with theoretical and methodological aspects is ‘The archaeology and the study of gender’, by Meg Conkey and Jane Spector, published in 1984. But despite the fact that it is really only a short time ago, this perspective has grown exponentially and today we have an enormous strength, both theoretically and methodologically, and in the case studies we know about.
In your book you propose this change of perspective in the historical narrative, breaking stereotypes and preconceived ideas. How have these accounts of what women were like in prehistoric times influenced our present?
This constructed view of what men and women did in the past continues to affect us today because
it has been constructed to sustain current inequality. If women and men have not participated equally in societies, if women do things that have no relevance, why should we have the same rights? If men are the only ones who have organised, invented, created, fought, thought, acted? isn't it normal that they are the ones who have the right and the capacity to govern?
And if you take this idea of what men and women do to build societies back to prehistory, that is, to our beginnings as a human species, as a society, aren't you making it almost essential? It's like saying: don't insist on ending inequality because it's part of who we are, and that's not true.
You state that ‘we do better science when we include women’ and that your ‘greatest support is scientific data’. Right here, there is still not much information about women in Talayotic Menorca. What role do new technologies play in these new scientific discourses?
The analysis methodologies currently available to us (the study of DNA, isotopes, the improvement of C14 and the analysis of peptides and ceramic contents...) provide us with crucial information to get to know the people of the past, telling us not only about sex and age, but also about illness, physical effort, diet, origin, migrations... But that is not the most important thing.
The most relevant thing that feminism has brought to archaeology is that it has asked different questions, questions that had not been asked until now, even questions that still cannot be answered, but the fact of asking them puts us on the way to answering them. We still don't see women? Let's go out and look for them.
With this scientific evidence in hand, it shows that women also hunted, painted, made tools and were also warriors. If women were there, why deny them?
Well, because in the construction of historical discourses, those things you mention are the important ones, the ones that have made us advance as a society, so they must be in male hands.
If we show that women are also actively participating in these activities, how do we justify the greater importance of men? This preconceived idea, this stereotype is so strong that sometimes even the scientific reality has been denied, as happened for example with the case of Birka's warrior.
Likewise, you point out that menstruation, breastfeeding, childbirth and care have been forgotten from the historical narrative...
Yes, because they have been considered biological issues that have nothing to do with culture and therefore have nothing to do with social, economic or political issues. Women are nature, not culture.
But I ask myself, do all women in the world give birth in the same way? In the same spaces, accompanied by the same people? In the same position? With the same medical resources? It's not like that. So it's not only biological, it's also social, political, ritual.
On breastfeeding, look how many debates there are today, because in prehistoric times decisions were also made: who is weaned first, boys or girls? Up to what age? Is breastfeeding extended because the children have health problems? Questions that we can now answer and that show us, once again, that
not everything is biological and therefore need historical explanation.
You are one of the founders of Pastwomen, a project that conceives archaeology as an instrument of social transformation. What is its goal?
Pastwomen is a web resource that aims to give visibility to the lines of research in archaeology and history that are linked to the study of women's material culture, while at the same time providing updated resources from feminist perspectives to all sectors involved in the dissemination of history.
We realised that no matter how much knowledge we were able to obtain, if we were not able to transmit that knowledge to the public we would not be able to transform society, which is our goal. So we started creating images, illustrations in which there were women, men, creatures, elderly people, people with different abilities.... In other words, the whole of society.
From there, we gave courses to teachers, we created specific itineraries, we have a wonderful calendar every year that you can download, and now we are starting a magazine on feminist archaeology.
And what projects do you have underway now?
We want to continue advancing in the generation and transmission of knowledge in every possible way. We want to continue transforming the world in which we live, making it more egalitarian and inclusive,
adding knowledge about women because that means adding knowledge about who we are.