Stereotypes Of Richard Wetherill And Kenneth Feder's Exploration Of Archaeology

A stereotype can be defined as idea or claim made about a group of people or profession that was formulated without any evidence to back up the claim. When it comes to archaeologists there are many stereotypes, where few of them hold any truth. For example, some stereotypes include: all archaeologists are men, archaeologists are looking for something that is lost, they are often in highly dangerous situations, they have people trying to kill them and they win over a girl when they find what they are looking for. These stereotypes have been created because of popular archeology movies such as Indiana Jones and The Mummy. However, when looking at actual archaeologists such as Richard Wetherill and Kenneth Feder we see that some of these stereotypes
When looking at Kenneth Feder we see during his excavation of Wood Lily the only stereotype he fits is that most archaeologists are male. However, when looking at the other stereotypes we see that none of them fit for Kenneth Feder. Feder was not searching for anything specifically lost at Wood Lily, he was only looking for anything that would allow him to understand the area better like tools. Feder was not in any danger at Wood Lily, he was in a controlled archeological environment where there was little to no danger. Lastly, Feder at no point won over a girl at Wood Lily for all of the ancient tools he found. Therefore, Feder also does not support many of the stereotypes made about
When looking at the stereotypes both Feder and Wetherill were males so they both fit the archaeologist are all male stereotypes. However, that is the only real stereotype they both fit, both Feder and Wetherill were not looking for anything lost, they both were not working in dangerous situations being pursued by anyone and they both did not win over a girl because they found what they were looking for. When looking at how Feder and Wetherill performed their excavation is where we see more differences. Wetherill and Feder worked during completely different time periods, Wetherill in the late 1800's and Feder in 1986. Due to the difference in time periods many archaeological techniques were different and more advanced during Feder's time, so he was able to have better success at finding tools and materials at Wood Lily. Also, the idea of patterning was more prevalent during Feder's archaeological dig. Feder was able to look at the tools he found to make assumptions on how they were used to get a better understanding of the people that used to live at Wood Lily. For example, he finds a stone tool that he calls a gouge and says, "I'm calling it a gouge because of the wear patterns apparent on its working surface... ,a series of scratch marks can be seen on both faces "(Feder 2008: 394). This shows how Feder was more interested in trying to figure out what each