Daphne Lorimer and Dorothy Marshall

Not just women but island dwellers – twice the minority/twice the impact?

The following text is a transcript of a peper given by our Fellow Caroline Wickham-Jones at the Women in the Heritage seminar on 4 April 2008.

When I first heard of this meeting I thought it was a fantastic idea, since then I’ve been wondering about all sorts of things.  I’m not sure whether even holding the meeting implicitly marginalises women – I can’t imagine a similar day based around the contributions of men.  But perhaps we just have to accept that women have been marginalised and maybe that is too simplistic a view anyway.  Maybe women just work in different ways.  I’m struck by the way in which women have tended to contribute to the heritage while remaining outside the bureaucratic centres of power, to the extent that a woman in a high post is still a matter for comment.  Do women and men really have different ways in which they infiltrate the world?  I’m also struck by the way in which we have chosen to celebrate women through the lives of previous generations.  Did they have more to offer than women today?  Do we think that all is now resolved?  Are we happy with our lot?  Or is it just not “womanly” to blow our own trumpets?

Of course, I have done the same; I have chosen people who worked, both literally and metaphorically, in the past.  One of my younger colleagues (younger than I) asked why I was not talking about people like her… and I have to say that I could have done - when I think about it there is still a great army (not sure that is the right word) of people like her out there who are opening our eyes to aspects of heritage that often do not make official grades or research agendas.  Aspects that, for many reasons fall between the mesh of knowledge, or do so when they are first mooted – perhaps women are good at pushing boundaries.  Do they embrace the marginal and experimental more readily?  I think there is also almost a taboo about naming ourselves, or even our contemporaries, in something like this.

Interestingly, I also felt as if I was invading privacy by talking about two people I knew.  Nevertheless, both have made a substantial contribution to archaeology and heritage, not just in Scotland, and I’d like to draw attention to them.

Dorothy Marshall and Daphne Lorimer came into archaeology by very different routes.  Dorothy knew she wanted to study archaeology, but ended up waiting until the time was right.  Family responsibilities kept her in the island of Bute so she was already mature when she studied at the Institute of Archaeology in London and as a student joined Kathleen Kenyon digging at Jericho.  She moved in good archaeological circles, but returned home to settle in Bute from where she carried out both academic work and excavation – exerting an impressive degree of influence on the outside world. 

Dorothy is best known for her work on artefacts, especially carved stone balls, and her excavations (such as the chambered tomb at Glenvoidean), but heritage to her was not just about academia.  Dorothy was a passionate communicator and rather good at enthusing people.  She had a lifelong involvement with the Buteshire Natural History Society and its museum (she was very actively involved into her 90s, which is when I came to know her).  She treated all equally, both adults and children got drawn in, and she was actively involved with both the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and with the Council for British Archaeology Scottish group (as it then was).

Daphne Lorimer also came into archaeology as an adult.  She got involved with HADAS (Hendon and District Archaeological Society) when she lived in London where she worked as a radiographer.  She carried out excavation with them and that was when I first got to know her through her work with lithics.  In later life, though, Daphne retired to the family home in Orkney and concentrated on human skeletal material, on which she published many papers.  As with Dorothy, Daphne was not just concerned with the academic side of heritage.  She was instrumental in the setting up of Orkney Archaeological Trust and the expansion of archaeology in Orkney through the creation of an MA degree at Orkney College, UHI.  In 1999 she saw the culmination of much hard work (on her part and others’) in the designation of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage site.  Daphne continued to be active in archaeology well into the new millennium.

Both Daphne and Dorothy contributed much to academic knowledge, but their contribution was wider than that.  They fought for, expanded, and raised the profile of and access to archaeology and heritage, both in their home islands and further afield. 

When I think of them both what I remember most is their hospitality.  That is what raises them from mere archaeological names – albeit important ones – to people.  For me, as an Edinburgh-based archaeologist (a while ago), both showed great kindness, encouragement and hospitality.  Both were based, when I first knew them, in areas that might, today be described as “remote”.  They lived in islands – Dorothy in Bute, Daphne in Orkney.  Yet in a pre-internet age, they managed to spread their knowledge so that it benefited those even at the organisational centre of things.  Perhaps that is the contribution of women - that they are not afraid to work outside of the usual boundaries.  Perhaps they have to?  Do men cling more to the centres of power?  (As an interesting aside - all of Scotland’s island authorities have women county archaeologists).

Of course, it would be wrong to say that recognition did not matter to them because we all like to be appreciated; but what really shines out when I think of them is that they did their archaeology because they loved it and because it mattered to them, not because of what it might bring.  When I stayed with them I was myself listened to and appreciated and I responded to that.  I loved going to Dorothy’s because she always got you to sign her visitors book and that is the only time I’ve felt an equal with the likes of Lacaille and Childe (though they got there first). 

Daphne and Dorothy both continued to make their contributions well into their old age – they were not much younger than I when they first got started.  They taught me not to rush.  Really all I can hope is that I might be as lucid and sprightly when I reach my later decades.