As in many fields, the contribution of women to the early practice of archaeology in the Indo-Pacific has been to some extent 'hidden' with a few notable exceptions, such as Madeleine Colani in Mainland Southeast Asia and Katherine Routledge in Polynesia in the early twentieth century. This session welcomes contributions on the role of women in the development of archaeology in our region prior to the current millennium. While contributions are especially welcome on early women pioneers during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, papers discussing the 'hidden history' of women archaeologists and the challenges faced by them over the last now nearly 75 years are also encouraged. We would expect to see papers as either individual biographies of significant women archaeologists or stories of groups/cohorts of women archaeologists or more general discussions of the role of women archaeologists in the Indo-Pacific region.