Janet D. Spector

Janet D. Spector (October 21, 1944 – September 13, 2011) was an American archaeologist known for her contributions to the archaeology of gender and ethnoarchaeology.

Early life Spector was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. The neighborhood she grew up in was called Nakoma and like most other things in her community was rooted in Native American culture. Although she lived on the corner of Shawnee Pass and Cherokee Drive and frequently walked with her grandfather through the Native American mounds situated in Vilas Park, the history of her surroundings was never made explicit to her. She is also the author of the 1993 book What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village, which combines Spector's autobiography with the excavation of the Little Rapids site (also known as Inyan Ceyaka Otonwe) in Scott County, Minnesota and a fictional story of a young Dakota woman who lived in the village. The book was revolutionary in its attempt at a task differentiation framework and its intersectional approach to ethnography with Indigenous and gendered perspectives at the forefront.

Death Spector died on September 13, 2011.

Selected publications J.D. Spector 1993. What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village. Minnesota Historical Society Press. J.D Spector and M.K. Whelan 1989. Incorporating gender into archaeology courses. In Gender and Anthropology: Critical Reviews for Research and Teaching, ed. Sandra Morgen (Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, 1989), pp. 65–94. M.W. Conkey and J.D. Spector. 1984. Archaeology and the study of gender. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 1–38 J.D. Spector 1983. Male/ Female Task Differentiation Among the Hidatsa: toward the development of an archaeological approach to the study of gender. In P. Albers and B. Medicine.The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women.