Women in Portuguese archaeology: A photograph of the Vila Nova de São Pedro excavation team (early 1950s)

Abstract

This photograph was taken during one of numerous archaeological excavations at the Vila Nova de São Pedro (VNSP) site in the 1950s. The site itself is a chalcolithic (Copper Age) hillfort located near the town of Azambuja, north of Lisbon in Portugal.20 The VNSP archaeological site has been studied intermittently since the 1930s. Some of the initial campaigns were directed and co-directed by Manuel Afonso do Paço (1895–1968), a member of the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists, founded in Lisbon in 1863. We see him pictured in this photograph together with the young archaeologist Maria de Lourdes Costa Arthur (1924–2003). Maria de Lourdes had a degree in Historical and Philosophical Sciences from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and specialised in archaeology from the Roman period during her time as a scholarship holder of the Portuguese State in Madrid. Nothing, however, prevented her from taking an interest in and investigating sites and materials belonging to other chronologies, as was the case with VNSP. These archaeological campaigns were largely made possible by the participation of local workers, both men and women, hired seasonally to carry out specific tasks: a set of actors also present in this photograph.