A public conference followed by a scholarly symposium was held at Tucson, AZ in March 1986. Co-sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, The Southwest Institute for Research on Women, the Arizona State Museum, and the Department of Anthropology and the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona, "Daughters of the Desert" brought together more than 20 scholars to discuss the history of women in southwestern anthropology. The conference included an exhibit with an illustrated catalogue: Daughters of the Desert (Babcock and Parezo 1988). Now, with the publication of Hidden Scholars: Woman Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest, we have, as the Woodburys state in their Foreword, "a comprehensive survey of southwestern anthropology" with an expanded history and biographical profiles of some 50-60 of the most important of the more than 1,600 women who have worked in southwestern anthropol­ogy.

This volume appears when there is renewed interest in the history of anthropology, the history of women within anthropology (especially American anthropology), and the issue of gender in archaeological research. Recent symposia and conferences have focused on these topics, e.g., ''Women in Archaeology: The Second Annual Symposium on the History of American Archaeology" held at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (April 1989), and the entire 22nd Annual Chacmool Conference (November 1989).