VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

Long before feminists entered the realm of art history, reshaping the way we see women’s place in art history, some Victorian women archaeologists took their destinies into their own hands and pursued adventure far from rules and the security of their homes and families. Along with it, some of them also registered their own experience, with their own unique perspectives. One of the most famous was Agatha Christie. With her very special voice she told the tales of archaeology, both as a memoir, in Come, Tell Me How You Live, An Archaeological Memoir, and as murder mysteries such as Murder in Mesopotamia, The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (in Poirot Investigates), Appointment with Death or even Five Little Pigs. Redesigning the image of women, away from the Victorian models of her childhood, her books, partly inspired by her life and travels, shown unusual female characters inspired by real women, with their sense of adventure and passion for knowledge, even at their own peril. Such an image of this dusty life — together with mystery murders and the exciting little grey cells of her famous sleuth, reputed to had “made a good archaeologist”, having “the gift of re-creating the past” — made way for the emergence of other fictional archaeologists and adventurers and contributed to popular awareness of archaeology relevance. In my chapter, I will show some of the signs Agatha Christie gave us of a changing world, making her own quite mind revolution through her female archaeologist characters.