Ladies of the Field: Early Women Archaeologists and Their Search for Adventure

by Amanda Adams

Hair cropped mannishly short, a board strapped beneath her white linen shirt, and a red ribbon looped through the buttonhole of her well-cut suit jacket, Jane Dieulafoy embraced la vie de l’homme. In a day when new brides were expected to tuck into homemaking, to fluff the nest and prepare for babies to arrive, the Dieulafoys began their marriage in a radically different way. Shortly after their wedding, Jane Dieulafoy dressed herself convincingly as a boy and fought as a front-line solider alongside her husband, Marcel, during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. She camped with the men, never revealing her identity as a woman, and trekked with the army of the Loire through harsh conditions and definite danger. Later, as her interest in archaeology blossomed and her explorations in the field took her to what is now Iran, she adopted the dress of a western man completely. Forsaking the ruffled petticoat, Dieulafoy was one of the first European women to slip into a pair of pants. In doing so she became something of celebrity in nineteenth-century Paris where she was both admired and mocked. She never went back to women’s clothing. Her cross-dressing had something of a Charlie Chaplin effect; she looked a touch comic in pictures and sketches yet completely put together and fashionable, her shirt buttoned high up her neck, waistcoat snug, trousers perfectly tailored, black shoes laced and polished.