Abstract
Over several decades, feminist archaeologists have demonstrated that archaeology is dominated by men, across a variety of journals and granting agencies. More recently, scholars have turned their attention to the mechanisms by which women are pushed out of the field, examining factors including differential submission rates, sexism in the peer review process, sexual harassment, and an overall chilly climate. Here, I present a study of submissions, peer review, and publication patterns in the Journal of Field Archaeology (JFA). I served as an editorial assistant at the JFA in 2016–2019, while completing my dissertation on sexism, heterosexism, and racism in the discipline of archaeology (Heath-Stout 2019), which inspired Editor Christina Luke to suggest that I conduct this study. I demonstrate that gender imbalances in JFA publications stem not from sexist bias in peer review but from lower numbers of submissions from women scholars. Furthermore, while a change from single-blind to double-blind review in 2014 did not significantly change the gender balance of authors, it did shift reviewer behavior. Once reviewers did not know the identities of authors, they became more likely to suggest revisions instead of acceptance or rejection: anonymity for authors led to more nuanced critique by reviewers.
