Interpreting gender in Turkish archaeology and ancient history :|a critical discourse analysis

Abstract

Archeology and history, like all scientific disciplines, construct and communicate their scholarship through language. The discourses produced by these disciplines do not operate only within the boundaries of the academy, instead, they can be articulated by various ideologies. Looking at the academic publications on sex/gender/sexuality, it can be also seen that archeology and ancient history contribute to the formation of social memory for today's genders. This thesis deals with the history of gender discussions in Turkish archeology and ancient history in order to evaluate the current state on this issue. Benefitting from sociolinguistic approaches, it also questions which gendered discourses are dominantly produced. Therefore, 50 academic texts published between 1950-2020 and written in Turkish are analyzed to discuss the discursive patterns and subjects with their sociopolitical context. As a result of the qualitative analysis, which is based on Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, it has been observed that within Turkish scholarship the concept of gender mostly corresponds to women in archaeology and ancient history. It is proposed that this is due to considering men as the norm in the past, which leads the scholarship to treat women as a category to be studied. It can also be discerned that most authors who interpret gender reflect their academic identities and political stance on their written language. This thesis demonstrates that Critical Discourse Analysis can elucidate dominant discourses in the formation of academic scholarship and their relationship with contemporary ideologies.