Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.     

Representing Commerce in Tallis’s London Street Views

This essay examines how the London Street Views organize the city as a space of commercial interaction, one that is curiously at odds with an image of crowded Victorian streets full of shoppers, street-sellers, advertisements, and window displays. As a commercial directory, it is at once tightly self-referential and open ended, cross referring information between the lists of businesses, the advertisements, and the street elevations while also including advertisements for shops in other streets and neighbourhoods than that focused on in each issue. This essay considers the distinctiveness of Tallis’s project by contextualizing his Street Views within a range of forms of urban commercial information, including directories and advertisements.     

“Like Barnabas and Saul”: Malagasy Converts in Britain, 1839–1841

In 1839, six Malagasy Christians arrived in Britain under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. The group had been persecuted in Madagascar for their faith. They were introduced to the British evangelical community as saints and martyrs who were dependent on the missionary society, but their decision to undertake the long journey was shaped by their spiritual beliefs, their desire to develop their education, and their wish to eventually become evangelical missionaries in Madagascar. At public meetings around the country, the Malagasy used a Christian frame of reference to describe their personal stories and their hopes for the future of Christianity in Madagascar. As speaking subjects, not merely objects of spectacle and display, they communicated to British audiences their credibility as fellow Christians, educated individuals, and civilised human beings.