Movement in archeology that focuses on the concerns of feminists as they seek to expose and remedy male-bias in archaeological interpretation and education, inequalities in professional employment, male-bias in the presentation of archaeology to the public, and to consider issues of female agency as part of a broader program of gender archeology.

Feminist archaeology consists of diverse political and theoretical interest groups. The majority of feminists in archaeology are sometimes described as empiricist feminists who work largely within the accepted academic standards of the discipline. More radical standpoint feminists question the structures within which archaeological knowledge is constructed, sometimes suggesting a greater validity for explicitly feminist research. Because of its critical approach, feminist archaeology has sometimes been viewed as allied to critical archaeology or post-processual archaeology. Few feminist archaeologists support intuitive interpretations of the past based on the subjectivity of being a woman. Moreover, feminist archaeologists have largely resisted the view that an essential category of woman can be studied in the past, proposing instead that gender is socially constructed and culturally specific.

The major contribution of feminist archaeology to academic research has been its critique of the mainstream discipline and its challenge to existing methodologies and research priorities. However, the results of reinterpretations and theory-building have recently come to fruition through contributions to gender archaeology. Feminist concerns with the origins of sexual inequality that dominated early studies have been superseded by issues such as female agency, the cultural construction of the category of woman, and the role of women in cultural transformations related to technology, agriculture, religion and social formations. The feminist critique continues to unmask male-bias in the definition of academic research, but the male agenda is now replaced with new analyses and interpretations. Recent feminist archaeology has integrated a more humanistic approach to the past, seeking to illuminate the interpersonal and intimate aspects of social settings and to present more inclusive archaeological interpretations which will engage audiences of different genders, classes, ethnicities and ages.