Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release                              
November 4, 1999

Lawrence University Archaeologist Honored As "Pioneer" in her Discipline  


     APPLETON, WIS. -- Armed with a trowel, brush and screening table,
Carol Mason began her assault on the archaeological world's version of
the glass ceiling more than 40 years ago.
     Among the first women in the South ever to pursue a Ph.D. in
anthropology, Mason will be honored Thursday, Nov. 11 for her
pioneering efforts in the field of anthropology at the Southeastern
Archaeological Conference in Pensacola, Fla.  She will be one of five
women at the conference publicly recognized for their contributions to
the study of archaeology in the southeastern United States.
     Mason is featured in a chapter of the recently released book, "Grit
Tempered:  Early Women Archaeolgists in the Southeastern United States."
The book profiles 10 female archaeologists "who made significant
contributions to their discipline during a time when that discipline was
structured to exclude their kind (female)."
     "It's an honor and a pleasure to think these other women (the
editors of the book) could look back and see something worthwhile in my
work," said Mason, who is serving as adjunct professor of anthropology
at Lawrence after retiring from a 31-year teaching career at UW-Fox
Valley.  "It's very touching to think they were that interested in my
experiences.  This has all come as a great surprise to me."     
     Mason wrote an essay for the book that comprises the chapter
entitled,
"This Ain't The English Department."  It's a memoir of her experiences
as an undergraduate student in the 1950s at Florida State University and
her early years as a professional archaeologist.
     "Being a woman in a department without women faculty members did
not seem to be worth being concerned about," Mason writes in her essay.
"My mentors and role models were anthropologists, and not having women
as mentors and role models did not adversely affect me.  Faculty were
people, human beings, and as one of the species, I felt equally at home
among them."
     Her chapter in the book has been so well received that it will be
excerpted and reprinted in the Archaeological Institute of America's
popular magazine "Archaeology" in the January/February 2000 issue. 
     Mason, who previously served on the Lawrence faculty as a visting
professor  during the 1989-90 academic year and has also taught at St.
Norbert College and UW-Green Bay, has been active in Great Lakes area
archeaology for much of the past 30 years.  From 1969-73, she
co-directed, with her husband, Ronald Mason, professor emeritus of
anthropology at Lawrence, five field seasons of Lawrence archaeological
excavations on Rock Island in Door County, the most extensive digs ever
undertaken there.  
     She has authored three dozen published articles, many of which deal
with her research on prehistoric Indians in Wisconsin, and she is
currently engaged in sorting and cataloging many of the artifacts in the
Wells Collection, a 30,000-piece collection bequethed last year to the
Lawrence anthropology department by a Door County resident.
     "The study of material culture has had its ups and downs, its ins
and outs of fashion," Mason says in her essay, reflecting on her career
and the attraction that led her to pursue a life as an archaeologist in
the first place.  "The consciousness of things and the connectedness
conferred by their contemplation has never left me.  I am still
enchanted by the world of objects, the skills of those who have put
something of their humanity into creation, and the liveliness of
imagination that characterizes our species.  And for those
anthropologists who cannot tell a fluted point from an ulu -- or even
worse, do not care -- I have nothing but sympathy.  They are missing a
lot."